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."

Comments

The REAL question is

[the_skywise]

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?

Re:The REAL question is

[ScentCone]

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.

Re:The REAL question is

[naris]

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.

Re:The REAL question is

[EndlessNameless]

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.

Re:The REAL question is

[arth1]

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...

Cloud yeah

[guruevi]

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?

Twitter CSR doesn't need manager approval

[mveloso]

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.

Re:Twitter CSR doesn't need manager approval

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

^^^ 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.

Re:Are all the editors on Slashdot liberal SJW's?

[Weaselmancer]

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.

Re:Monopoly

[Bigbutt]

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]

Re:Here we go - NAZIS!!!! Aaaaaaa!

[cogeek]

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.

self-fulfiliing excuse?

[JustNiz]

>> 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?