Trump knocks 'rogue' Twitter staffer for briefly deleting @realDonaldTrump
President Trump made up for lost time by launching into a massive tweetstorm Friday morning, the day after his account was temporarily deactivated by what Twitter says was an outgoing customer support worker.
The president boasted that his influence on social media was significant enough that a rogue Twitter employee wanted to silence him.
My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
On Thursday night, Twitter announced through its Twitter Government account, which provides updates on governments and elections, that Trump’s account had been “inadvertently deactivated due to human error” by a Twitter employee for 11 minutes, and had since been restored. The online news service said it would continue investigating the incident and would take steps to make sure it does not happen again.
Twitter then announced that the employee responsible for taking down the account was on his or her last day with the company — suggesting that the action was not inadvertent. Twitter said it is conducting a full internal review of the incident.
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. We are conducting a full internal review. https://t.co/mlarOgiaRF
— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
After chiming in on the Twitter account controversy, Trump fired off a series of tweets about former interim Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile’s claim that Hillary Clinton rigged the Democratic primary against Bernie Sanders. The president railed against the Justice Department for not investigating Clinton, his former political foe, days after special counsel Robert Mueller charged three former Trump campaign aides with various crimes.
Trump also vowed revenge against the so-called Islamic State after the group claimed credit for the Manhattan vehicle attack earlier this week. In his tweets, Trump called the suspect a “Degenerate Animal.”
Though Trump’s Twitter feed is back online, its temporarily deactivation might be a cause for concern about the security of the president’s account, which he uses to announce policies, attack opponents and influence supporters.
When reached for comment Friday morning, Emily Horne, the head of global policy communications at Twitter, told Yahoo News, “We won’t have anything beyond the tweets we issued last night.”
Twitter Government released the following update that afternoon:
Update: We have implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again. 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. https://t.co/8EfEzHvB7p
— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
As expected, the online reaction was split between liberals who joked about how much they appreciated the employee’s action and conservatives who argued that their joy demonstrates a disregard for freedom of speech among the left.
In the past, Twitter has removed accounts of high-profile conservatives with ties to Trump, such as right-wing provocateurs Milo Yiannopoulos and Roger Stone, for violating its terms of service. But it does not appear to be common for one employee to single-handedly disable a famous person’s account without the company’s input.
Twitter was criticized in September for deciding not to deactivate Trump’s account after he published a tweet that many interpreted as a violent threat against the people of North Korea. The company responded that it holds all accounts to the same standards but that it also takes into consideration whether a particular tweet is newsworthy or of public interest.
Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017
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