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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."

27 of 377 comments (clear)

  1. The REAL question is by the_skywise · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:The REAL question is by leonbev · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, the real question is why they restored it so quickly. I would have loved having a week or two without having to hear about the latest Trump rant on CNN.

    2. Re:The REAL question is by ScentCone · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would have loved having a week or two without having to hear about the latest Trump rant on CNN.

      Then maybe you should watch less CNN. Do you really think that their non-stop anti-Trump ranting is in any way going to be modified by whether or not he's just tweeted something? If they can go on for a solid day about which shoes his wife wears on the way to get on an airplane, your hopes for them shutting up their one-note editorial focus for a week or two because of ANY change in communication method by Trump is just a silly fantasy.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    3. Re:The REAL question is by naris · · Score: 4, Informative

      From what I saw it wasn't deleted, it was deactivated so history and stuff should remain. also explains how it was back up in 11 minutes.

    4. Re:The REAL question is by EndlessNameless · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Jail time incoming for this illegal misuse of corporate services and computers.

      That is extremely unlikely to happen. If a user cannot sue Twitter for deleting his account, who is going to bother with the ex-employee?

      As far as "illegal misuse", this employee was apparrently granted access to manage user accounts. Unless he circumvented security measures to get that access, he didn't break the law. Firing an employee for misuse is certainly reasonable, but Twitter doesn't need to bother if he already left the company.

      I anticipate no legal consequences. Is 11 minutes without Twitter even justification for a torte?

      Another libtard is about to realise the world isn't like their faggy echo-chamber they create for themselves.

      Ah, so we have a reason for your rush to authoritative, punitive judgment: partisan politics.

      --

      ---
      According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
    5. Re:The REAL question is by I75BJC · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I never hear of these so-called "Trump rants". I don't watch CNN or any TV news outlets. (All the stories are virtually the same. It's just the characters, the places, or the causes/issues that are different. That's all. I ignored the Media for 6 months once, on purpose, and then listened again. Every story was the same just different characters, places, and clauses/issues. Just the same bovine scat. Like in the "Casablanca" film, at the end, when the Vichy French officer instructs his junior police officers to round up the "usual suspects". American Politics is exactly the same -- just a drama to keep the uninformed from living their lives. These sycophants want all the attention focused on theirselves but they don't desire it. But you have fallen into the Trap!)

    6. Re:The REAL question is by arth1 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Jail time incoming for this illegal misuse of corporate services and computers.

      That would be nice, but nothing really sticks to Trump, and he's said that he can pardon himself if need be...

    7. Re:The REAL question is by WheezyJoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Every story was the same just different characters, places, and clauses/issues. Just the same bovine scat. Like in the "Casablanca" film, at the end, when the Vichy French officer instructs his junior police officers to round up the "usual suspects". American Politics is exactly the same -- just a drama to keep the uninformed from living their lives.

      That's because most "news" has to be entertaining, in order to attract people's attention and keep it long enough to expose them to an ad, ask them for a pledge, or persuade them their tax money is well spent (depending on what country you're in). So they broadcast most often what they think is going to grab the most attention.

      There's actually two kinds of news. The first kind you watch only because your job depends on it. This news is boring: farming reports, commodity news, financial news and market reports, that kind of thing. You won't see Trump's Tweets there, but unless you have some reason to watch/read/listen to this stuff, you won't.

      Then there's the other news that you watch because it's at least part-way entertaining. Informative, sure, but politics, disasters, and videos of kittens being rescued from a tree are all entertaining, and the people in these businesses are in competition with each other to get more viewers. They all look the same? No surprise - in media and politics, you tend to work the same formula that succeeded in the past. FWIW, Trump's Tweets attracts attention, so infotainment news splashes them up like they're the next damn moon landing. Followed by an important message from Polident denture cleaner (keeps your teeth from being stinky and gross). Mission accomplished.

      --
      Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
    8. Re:The REAL question is by Soft · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wishing that everyone had access to food, shelter, and healthcare makes me a liberal.

      Nitpick: I thought that everybody would wish that, but liberals think society should intervene directly to force that goal, while conservatives think society will be better off as a whole if this is left to the actions of private organizations and individuals. Am I correct?

  2. Cloud yeah by guruevi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    1. Re:Cloud yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nothing gets deleted in the true sense. It's flagged to be hidden. If you're one of the many agencies or advertisers with API access to twitter, FB, Google, Apple accounts, you'll see everything ever posted even if the account holder cannot.

    2. Re:Cloud yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Uhh it is fucking Twitter and it is NOT YOUR DATA. You use their service and agree to their terms and conditions. And being president does not give him anymore fucking authority on Twitter than you or I. Hell, if Twitter deactivated POTUS and Trump's personal account and decided they don't want the likes of him on their service that is their choice.

      The market may decide to respond with new alternatives to Twitter because of the censorship and that is the risk Twitter will take.

  3. Twitter CSR doesn't need manager approval by mveloso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Twitter CSR doesn't need manager approval by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ^^^ This. Fortunately, every company that does business with Twitter just crapped their pants too. I would expect Twitter's sales department will have fun fielding a hundred thousand revenue-neutral "how can I be sure some minimum wage rep doesn't delete [brandname] during our Superbowl commercial (or other campaign)" conversations.

    2. Re:Twitter CSR doesn't need manager approval by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They have no real oversight whatsoever

      Except for the oversight that restored the account in 11 minutes. And the fact that the data wasn't even deleted, merely deactivated in case it needed to be restored later. But yeah, other than that oversight, there is none whatsoever.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. Re:Are all the editors on Slashdot liberal SJW's? by Weaselmancer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  5. The Amazing Part by dlleigh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:Monopoly by Bigbutt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!
  7. Re:What's wrong with that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    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?

  8. Twitter should retaliate by naming the person by DeplorableCodeMonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  9. Here we go - NAZIS!!!! Aaaaaaa! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Here we go - NAZIS!!!! Aaaaaaa! by cogeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wish everyone understood it like this. Protecting our rights isn't about protecting only the rights of those we agree with. Everyone has the same rights. We have to specifically protect the rights of those we disagree with if we expect them to do the same once our rights are the ones being violated.

  10. Re:Are all the editors on Slashdot liberal SJW's? by alex67500 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...

  11. Re:Who gives a shit? Everyone should... by Tough+Love · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  12. self-fulfiliing excuse? by JustNiz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> 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?

  13. Re:Who gives a shit? by Green+Mountain+Bot · · Score: 3, Funny

    I would think the fact that they don't have common carrier status probably is a bigger jeopardy to their common carrier status.

  14. Re:Are all the editors on Slashdot liberal SJW's? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Shutting down free speech with violence while wearing masks and literal blackshirts is not fighting fascism. It is fascism!

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!