Twitter has explained the circumstances behind the disappearance of the Twitter account of Donald Trump for a brief period on Thursday night.
Screenshots such as the one below starting spreading like wildfire on social media on Thursday evening, when it seemed as if the account of the President of the United States had suddenly been deactivated without explanation.
The curiosity, and indeed, giddiness, that greeted the disappearance of Trump’s account didn’t last for long as it was restored within 11 minutes of being deactivated.
Having initially attributed it to human error, a Twitter investigation subsequently determined one of the oldest explanations in the book, that it was the work of a disgruntled Twitter customer support employee on their last day in the job.
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.
— Government (@Gov) 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
— Government (@Gov) November 3, 2017
The identity of said employee may never be revealed.
The person was guilty of a fairly damning lack of professionalism, but the reaction to the revelation suggests they won’t be short of a job offer or two, and there’ll be a long queue of people waiting to give them a pat on the back.
— Matt Silich (@msilich2) November 3, 2017
https://twitter.com/hashtagmolly/status/926271881782624258
Hero
— DANNYonPC (@DANNYonPC) November 3, 2017