On Thursday night, Twitter exploded in expressions of shock, joy, humor, and intrigue over the disclosure that the deactivation of President Trump’s personal account was pulled off by a departing Twitter employee on the employee’s last day of work. When the account, which has 41.7 million followers, was first taken down at around 7 p.m. EDT—for about 11 minutes—speculation ran rampant over what happened: Was Trump banned by Twitter due to his provocative and sometimes inappropriate content, which has reportedly caused an internal debate at Twitter? Did his lawyers suggest he take it down because he is in legal jeopardy, amid the Mueller investigation?
At first, Twitter blamed the deactivation on “human error” but then later announced that a customer support employee had performed the feat on their last day at the company.
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
Here are some of the reactions to the incident:
“We have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day” pic.twitter.com/mVB2Pwc8rv
— Jessica Winter (@winterjessica) November 3, 2017
Trump’s Twitter was deactivated by a “Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day.”
!!! pic.twitter.com/9xYfL9SAVE
— Philip Lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) November 3, 2017
And there were even some calls for the departing employee to be given a knighthood, invited to Thanksgiving dinner, and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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