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Twitter Employee Blamed For Deleting President Donald Trump's Account (npr.org)
A reader shares an NPR report: With the push of a button, an employee at Twitter accomplished for a brief few minutes on Thursday what President Trump's closest advisors have reportedly been trying unsuccessfully to do for months: shut down the seemingly never-ending tweet stream at @realDonaldTrump. Perhaps it was an act of civil disobedience, or maybe just a "take this job and shove it" moment, but shortly before 7 p.m., the president's personal account kicked back the error message "does not exist." By 7:03 p.m., it was up and running again and within about a half-hour, new presidential tweets were forthcoming. The folks at Twitter leapt into action to find out what had happened: "Earlier today @realdonaldtrump's account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee. The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored. We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again," the company said in a statement. Two hours later, the company said, "Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee's last day."
How many other accounts have simply been disappeared by a twitter employee that didn't like the account that never got noticed and remained deleted because they weren't the President of the US?
Where your data can get deleted by a click of a button by a disgruntled employee and even the fucking president of the United States can't be spared nor can his data be restored in less than 11 minutes.
Imagine if you weren't the president, would they even care?
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What we've discovered is that Twitter CSRs can whack any account whenever they want, for whatever reason they want. They have no real oversight whatsoever, so when this juvy decided to do something they just did it and left the building.
Besides being an asshole move, it shows a distinct lack of internal controls.
It means that some arbitrary process is in place to censor any point of view. Get the wrong censor, and your own pet cause could be next. It's all fun and games until a Scientologist is the censor.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Twitter unconscionably restricts users's free speech to fewer than 255 characters. We demand the full 8-bit width of a one-byte length descriptor.
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So somehow reporting that someone shut down Trump's twitter account is Trump bashing? It's a simple matter of fact.
Oh that's right - I forgot. Any facts that you guys don't like are fake news/someone's agenda/whatever so you don't have to face them.
Let me tell you something, my friend. Reality doesn't give two shits what you think about it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
His approval rating would probably rise if they did.
I neither voted for the guy, nor am I a "nevertrumper"; I think he's unfairly maligned much of the time (sometimes he deserves it too), but a lot of his tweets are ridiculous.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The amazing part of this episode is that Twitter discovered the disgruntled employee's action and rectified it in 11 minutes. How did they find out so quickly? Either the employee bragged or the action set off a trip wire, meaning that particular account was closely monitored by Twitter. I doubt that even the White House would be able to get Twitter to act so quickly once POTUS or his staff discovered that the account was broken.
You are correct, aside from the ad hominem. In this case, however, it was not the business that deleted the account. It was a rouge employee on his last day. Big difference.
1. That's not how free speech rights work. You are protected from the GOVERNMENT preventing you from speaking. This is a private company. They can censor anything they like (including the president, although they might have to retain his tweets, because of legal reasons).
2. I'd really like to understand your logic for how a service that depends on other mediums for transmission could possibly be a "common-carrier". They don't provide service. They aren't a telephone company. They aren't a wireless company.
As a note, the reason for the Fairness Doctrine being removed was Cable News like CNN. The Fairness Doctrine was intended to make sure everyone had a voice on the big three channels. With Cable, people aren't locked in to ABC, NBC, or CBS. You can get news from CNN or any other company that can get a cable presence. Then with the 'net, there are even more options with FoxNews and lots and lots of other sites like BBC and Al Jazeera.
The problem with this though is folks start to gravitate to their bubbles. Don't like hearing a Conservative or Liberal spin on the news? There are sites that cater just to your ideology. You don't hear other viewpoints and worse, the viewpoints you do hear are much stronger. And even worse are News Aggregators like the ones on devices (phones and tablets) and like Facebook where they're weighing what you click on and configuring your feed to give you more of what you indicate you like enough to read. Without a conscious effort to go to alternate sites, you get into a feedback loop.
Over the years I've found myself getting into that loop and having to work at broadening my news to include sites outside my ideology. The bad part are the aggregation sites aren't good at providing just news. I'll go to different sites and then have the "For You" sites include opinions that can be quite offensive, to the point that I have to block them from my views.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
You are correct, aside from the ad hominem. In this case, however, it was not the business that deleted the account. It was a rouge employee on his last day. Big difference.
Does it matter what their skin color is? Or did you mean rogue?
They got lucky that the person was smart enough to not delete the account. There are plenty of political radicals in SV that would have not been so rational. Since the threat of firing was already gone, the only way Twitter can punish them now is to publicly name the person who did this. That is also a good way to make it clear to other employees that if they follow in this person's footsteps, Twitter will not hesitate to nuke them in defense of its interests and users.
Like it or not, Trump is not just some user. He is almost a full blown asset with a monetary value to Twitter because he drives so much user engagement. Had the person deleted the account, Trump would have had a few options. One of which is Twitter's nightmare: move to Gab. Right now, Gab only has a few hundred thousand users and the neo-Nazis retards have a loud and proud presence there. I can guarantee you that if this SJW had deleted the account, Gab would have grown at least an order of magnitude within a few days. With 90 days, it would probably have at least 5M, if not 10M, users. Twitter would have also lost a huge source of engagement which would drive the conversations there down even further.
If Twitter management cares about shareholders (we know they don't, as Dorsey is still in charge), they'll take swift and brutal action against this person and their career.
Oh, deleting accounts of blacks and gays is acceptable? I seem to remember a recent court case about a wedding cake for a gay wedding that LEGALLY decided differently.
Good to know racism and sexism is ok, as long as you are a private company. Thanks for sticking up for racists!
Yes, I will stick up for racists. One has every right to be a racist, bigot or whatever. They have a right to speak their mind. But we also have the right to not listen to him - to censor him: tell him to get off of private property for instance, like a website.
Now, does the racist have a right to walk into a synagogue and start pontificating of the evils of Jews? Nope.
Does Twitter or any other media outlet have to allow the Nazi to share his views? Nope.
Do you have a right to tell him to STFU? Yep.
Does the government have a right to tell him to STFU? Nope.
Is rather be like the "intolerant" antifa than what they stand against.
The Nazis hate black people, brown people, Jews, Muslims, gay people, transsexuals, women, foreigners and so on.
Antifa hate the Nazis.
Those are not equivalent.
By defining "Nazis" an anyone who doesn't agree with Antifa, Antifa ARE Nazis.
Look at it this way:
Both Antifa and the Taliban respond to statues they don't like in the same way: tear them down.
Both Antifa and Mussolini's Fascists stated that they will violently attack people simply for preferring different economic policies.
When an organization has that much in common with the Taliban and Mussolini's Fascists - and masks themselves just like the KKK - there's a problem with that organization.
Yeah, this. It's probably the most famous Twitter account, which happens to be a technology firm, so News for Nerds kind of qualifies. I don't think TFS is very biased either, it's quite factual. The only thing it fails to mention is if said rogue employee will be charged, but I'd be amazed if they aren't...
Twitter is probably considered a "Public" means of communications (or a public utility). Just like the telephone...
Common carrier is the legal term you're looking for. Yes, megatechs guard that status jealously, it helps keep employee costs down.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
>> this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee's last day.
Was it their last day before they did it?
I'm glad you see things so black and white. I completely agree that some random religion's website is completely theirs to screw with. Twitter is not a religion, it is a company with a corporate charter. They get economic perks like tax incentives and limited liability. They are hugely influential in our national discussion. I think the public/private line is sufficiently blurred that the analogy begins to fail. If Twitter decides to tilt the decision a certain direction, it has a large impact on society. I think they probably should be able to pick and choose the kind of information that appears on their site, but then they cannot run and hide behind "common carrier" type arguments when it is convenient for them. Short of illegal posts, they become editors when they pick and choose what appears on their site.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I would think the fact that they don't have common carrier status probably is a bigger jeopardy to their common carrier status.
Shutting down free speech with violence while wearing masks and literal blackshirts is not fighting fascism. It is fascism!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
First they silenced the losers,
And I said nothing, because I was not a loser.
Then they silenced those with bad attitudes,
And I said nothing, because I didn't like their attitude.
Then they silenced the trolls,
And I said nothing, because trolls are bad, m'kay?
Then they silenced the guys with an actual, if controversial, point,
And I said nothing because I didn't notice.
Then ... You can see where this is going, right?
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