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posted by n1 on Wednesday November 08 2017, @08:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the sad! dept.

The President of the United States of America lost the crucial ability to Tweet for an 11 minute timespan on Thursday (Nov. 2), following the temporary deactivation of his Twitter account by a Twitter employee who was being let go by the company. The incident has raised questions about the safeguards in place for high-profile Twitter users:

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a deleted Twitter account. At least, so it appeared for 11 minutes Thursday evening, when visitors to President Trump's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, were informed that there was no such thing.

[...] Amid a presidency that has seemed, at times, to be conducted primarily in 140-character pieces, this was a seismic event — and what was left of Twitter erupted. It was a raucous, modern-day town-square gathering of the sort not seen since ... well, since five months ago, when Mr. Trump coined a new word in the middle of the night.

[...] The answer, revealed three hours later, was something straight out of "Office Space." After saying in an initial statement that the account had been "inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee," Twitter announced that a rogue customer support worker had done it on his or her last day at the company.

Previously: Twitter Shadowbans Republican Frontrunner
Twitter Co-founder: I'm Sorry if We Made Trump's Presidency Possible


Similar submissions also came from martyb and Phoenix666.

Original Submission #1Original Submission #2Original Submission #3

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 08 2017, @02:45PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 08 2017, @02:45PM (#594057)

    Maybe the employee saw the handle "realDonaldTrump" and thought "well, with that handle it must be a fake account. The real Donald Trump would surely just use the handle "DonaldTrump". the prefix "real" is a dead giveaway that is is a fake account. So I better delete it immediately."

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday November 08 2017, @03:18PM

    by Bot (3902) on Wednesday November 08 2017, @03:18PM (#594084) Journal

    My AI considers the probability of the above post to come from the mom of the twitter employee, attempting damage control, at around 55%

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    Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday November 08 2017, @04:55PM (1 child)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Wednesday November 08 2017, @04:55PM (#594128) Homepage Journal

    THAT'S A VERY FOOLISH THING TO SAY OR TO THINK. I AM VERIFIED BY TWITTER! WITH A BLUE CHECK MARK!

    • (Score: 4, Touché) by stretch611 on Wednesday November 08 2017, @06:08PM

      by stretch611 (6199) on Wednesday November 08 2017, @06:08PM (#594175)

      You are also verified by the Russians... with a "RED" check mark.

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      Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P