Trump Twitter account shut down by employee on last day of work
Donald Trump's Twitter account vanished for 11 minutes on Thursday.
Visitors to @realDonaldTrump around 2300 GMT Thursday were greeted with the message "Sorry, that page doesn't exist!"
Given the US president's frequent use of the platform, it was speculated that Twitter had deliberately disabled Trump's account.
Twitter first blamed the deactivation to "human error".
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
It later said a departing worker was to blame.
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
That a customer support employee had disabled Trump's account on his last day at work.
And that they were "conducting a full internal review".
The Twitterati have in the past accused Trump of violating the platform's guidelines -- by issuing a clear threat of violence.
Trump had at one time threatened that North Korea “won’t be around much longer” if the country’s leadership allowed hostile rhetoric against the United States to continue.
The North Korean government called it a declaration of war.
This time of course Twitter was able to see the humour in the temporary disabling:
We'll never forget the 10 minutes of peace while Donald Trump’s Twitter account was down.
— Luisa Haynes (@wokeluisa) November 2, 2017
Twitter HQ when they found out Donald Trump got deactivated for 11 minutes. pic.twitter.com/dqu79C3x6Q
— THANKFUL X (@XLNB) November 3, 2017
New Twitter employee mistakenly deactivates Donald Trump's Twitter account pic.twitter.com/gZ50xWC2bo
— Alex Marr (@Alexmarr98) November 3, 2017