“Rogue Twitter employee” deletes Trump’s account

“Rogue Twitter employee” deletes Trump’s account

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Whether he’s bashing “Crooked H,” boasting about America’s nuclear superiority or advocating that the National Football League (NFL) should “Fire or suspend!” players who kneel during the national anthem, President Donald Trump has created a strong link between his presidency and his Twitter account. The world experienced a first on Thursday night, when his account was deleted by a rogue Twitter employee.

The account was deleted shortly before 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time and remained down for a total of 11 minutes. During those 11 minutes, any visitors to Trump’s Twitter page would see a message reading: “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”

Though many onlookers have called the anonymous employee a hero, concerns about cyber security, the company’s internal practices and Twitter’s role as a global information platform have been raised.

In response to the event, Twitter tweeted that it has “implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again.” The company has not, however, detailed these safeguard and the measures that it plans to take. “We won’t be able to share all details about our internal investigation or updates to our security measures, but we take this seriously and our teams are on it.”

This incident comes after months of public controversy over Twitter’s regulation of Trump’s account. Many wonder why the company does not delete certain Tweets that appear to violate its rules.

Twitter’s rules forbid using the platform to make violent threats, including both direct and indirect threats. Twitter warns that accounts that violate that rule may be subject to a temporary or permanent suspension.

Details about the employee who deleted the account are unclear, but Twitter has reported that the company is conducting a full internal review.

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.”

 

Information for this article was obtained from twitter.com, washingtonpost.com and nytimes.com

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