Politics

The Hunt Is On To Find The Legend Who Deleted Donald Trump’s Twitter Account

A Twitter employee went rogue.

by Osman Faruqi  3 November 2017
Donald Trump

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This morning President Donald Trump’s Twitter account disappeared for 11 minutes and everyone freaked the hell out.

Well, it actually took eight minutes for people to realise the account was gone, but once they did they started freaking out.

Before the internet could settle on a theory around the vanishing account (Was he banned? Did he delete it? Did Melania delete it?) it was back up and running.

It’s like he never went away.

Then an official Twitter account tweeted that the temporary disappearance of Trump’s Twitter feed was down to “human error by a Twitter employee” who “inadvertently deactivated” it. They also announced they were investigating the issue and would take steps to stop something like this from happening again.

But is that really what people want?

Twitter then posted an update, explaining that through their investigation they had “learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day”.

So basically a Twitter employee went rogue on their last day and deleted the account of one the most influential and prolific tweeters in the world: the President of the United States.

On one hand, it’s extremely funny. There was no long-term damage done and it’s a great last day prank. On the other hand the fact that Twitter employees (and this one doesn’t sound like they were particularly senior) apparently have the power to delete accounts without any kind of process is a bit troubling.

What else can they do? Do they have the ability to hijack accounts and tweet whatever they want? When we’re talking about geopolitical issues that could get… kind of dicey.

But the real question is… who is the legendary rogue employee? Media organisations are already very keen to find out:

Even my boss is keen to get in on the action:

Look, the chances of this Twitter employee leaking their identity to an Australian publication are probably very small but on the off chance they’re reading this… hit us up.