In the very early hours of Friday November 3 2017, many followers of American President Donald Trump realized an usual situation as they could not longer tweet at him or find him on the social media platform.
Well, Donald Trump’s account got deleted and was off the platform for 11 minutes. This is according to Twitter Government.
In a series of Tweets, Twitter Government explained the mishap was as a result of human error by a Twitter employee.
Twitter Government reveals an investigation launched into the issues revealed the act was executed by “a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day”
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.
— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
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
We are however worried since a single Twitter employee can remove the account of the most power Twitter user on the planet. Two sources familiar with the company said that employees on Twitter’s Trust and Safety team have the ability to suspend or remove accounts, but a second source said that this is limited.
This source added that Twitter once considered a safeguard in which it would require two employees to remove important, notable Twitter accounts, but that it has never been implemented.
Another source said that Twitter’s top employees, including the CEO, could not automatically delete an account, which are monitored via what are essentially dashboards at the company.
That said, another source said that someone internally with tech skills could certainly figure out a way to go around the system.
What is not clear is whether Twitter had a special plan in place for Trump’s account, which is undoubtedly the most high-profile one on the platform, either to protect it or suspend it if he or those who tweet for him did anything to violate terms of service.
Trump will no doubt be frustrated with what happened, and we might hear from him in the morning via his Twitter account, which is back up and running and presumably being watched over more carefully now by Twitter.
