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martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Register is reporting that, at least for a short while, @realDonaldTrump [theregister.co.uk] was removed from Twitter:

Donald, you're fired: 'Lone Twitter staffer' deletes Trump's account Well, that's one way to announce 'I quit', we guess

For a few minutes on Thursday afternoon, Pacific Time, the Twitter account of US President Donald J. Trump ceased to exist.

The absence of such a distinctive, dare we say divisive, social media voice was noticed, and welcomed by some.

"For a brief moment Trump’s twitter was down & outside my window white nationalists were paying reparations to black people," commented [twitter.com] writer and Harvard PhD candidate Clint Smith. "Then I awoke."

"We’ll all remember where we were during the 10 minutes of peace while Donald Trump’s Twitter account was down," quipped [twitter.com] comedy writer Mike Drucker.

The deactivation came as Twitter rolled out new rules [twitter.com] on using its service, prompting netizens to wonder if the President's account had catastrophically fallen foul of the regulations.

Wow. Okay. They actually did it. @realDonaldTrump, you're fired, says Twitter pic.twitter.com/iqO4VZn7ja [t.co]

— The Register (@TheRegister) November 2, 2017 [twitter.com]

Oh, uh. Wait. It's back. pic.twitter.com/umYWp9EzUu [t.co]

— The Register (@TheRegister) November 2, 2017 [twitter.com]

Twitter a few minutes after the vanishing act blamed human error; specifically, a lone human's error. "Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee," the company said... via itself [twitter.com]. "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."

Although this was reported as an accidental situation, it does raise an interesting question: As a private entity, what happens if certain "undesirable" accounts started experiencing "technical issues"? Seems like there is a disproportionate ability to influence society. Same issue holds with other social media such as Facebook. What if these new media companies failed as a business and shut down all its servers... how would one gain access to these official government records? (Yes, according to the administration, tweets on this twitter channel are official communications from the president. Sadly, I lost the link and can not put my hand on it at the moment.)

Original Submission