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Rogue Twitter Employee Briefly Shuts Down Trump's Account

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

takyon writes:

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 #1  Original Submission #2  Original Submission #3 

 
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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday November 08 2017, @05:01PM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 08 2017, @05:01PM (#594132) Journal
    And I agree almost fully with that. But censorship can work in the long term if there is no work around to it such as in totalitarian societies. It's not going to happen in a relatively open society like the US, but it can happen for a very long time in a far less open society like the USSR.
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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 08 2017, @05:08PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 08 2017, @05:08PM (#594136) Journal

    I agree that censorship can 'work' for certain values of work. Word always seems to get out eventually. Even in the most repressive regimes. I remember the Newsweek stories after Romania fell. People remember and eventually have an opportunity to tell their stories.

    --
    Don't put a mindless tool of corporations in the white house; vote ChatGPT for 2024!

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 08 2017, @05:27PM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 08 2017, @05:27PM (#594155) Journal

      I remember the Newsweek stories after Romania fell.

      Note the use of the key word, "after".

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 08 2017, @06:44PM (1 child)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 08 2017, @06:44PM (#594187) Journal

        That word 'after' fits perfectly with each and every sentence I wrote after the first sentence.

        --
        Don't put a mindless tool of corporations in the white house; vote ChatGPT for 2024!

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday November 08 2017, @07:21PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 08 2017, @07:21PM (#594205) Journal
          I didn't quote those other sentences. All those stories only came out after the repressive government of Romania fell. If it took another 50 years for Romania to fall, then most of those stories would have died untold. That's the true power of censorship when it is effective.