Donald, YOU'RE FIRED: Rogue Twitter worker quits, deletes President Trump's account For a few minutes on Thursday afternoon, Pacific Time, the Twitter account of US President Donald J. Trump ceased to exist – sensationally deleted by a Twitter worker on their last day of work, we're told. The absence of such a distinctive, dare we say divisive, social media voice was immediately noticed, and welcomed by some …
If a single Twitter employee, just one, can delete the account of a public figure with 41M followers with no checks and balances...
Someone like Trump has the visibility to get his account restored. What about a Twitter employee that deletes your account because he doesn't like your position on Star Trek vs. Star Wars?
Seems like something at Twitter is clearly broken and needs to be fixed.
No, what's broken is the idea of using a single communications channel that you have absolutely no control over to handle your PR. This is why PR is more normally handled by services like a news agency or press conference where a multitude of outlets get to know what you tell them.
Twitter's absolutely within their rights- and indeed responsibilities in many localities- to remove accounts without their registered user's permission.
It's not YOUR account. It's /their/ network and /their/ account, which you use with /their/ permission. People seem to forget that.
@ Adam Foxton. You're confusing two issues though. Sure, the POTUS probably shouldn't be using Twitter the way he does (of course, it's not his only communication channel), and sure, you're merely hitching a ride on their platform, so you're never going to be in control.
But regardless of who's account was deleted, Twitter shouldn't have it so a CS employee can unilaterally delete *anyone's* account under any circumstances. There should be something like a two-step process that requires a supervisor's approval. Having the process so lax is just leaving it open to abuse - and such abuse is a security and reputational risk that needs to be mitigated against.
@Monty Cantsin "There should be something like a two-step process that requires a supervisor's approval"
So what about when the person doing it IS the supervisor? Should they get their boss to approve it? But wait who says that their boss is allowed to approve it? Better get their boss involved too....
You can't have all destructive decisions in an organisation by any person require the approval of their supervisor, because that just becomes a chain reaction eventually requiring the CEO to make every decision.
As someone else pointed out, the fact that they could do this likely means they were on the policy enforcement team. This is their job.
"Twitter shouldn't have it so a CS employee can unilaterally delete *anyone's* account under any circumstances. There should be something like a two-step process that requires a supervisor's approval."
Maybe a whole lot of them got together to do it and then blamed someone who was leaving.
Re: There should be something like a two-step process that requires a supervisor's approval.
There probably is a multistep procedure, which is why the account was only offline for a few minutes. However, it would still fall on a single employee to initially mark an account for deletion and thus start the process.
It seems (I don't follow Trump and can't be bothered accessing his stream) that the account was not deleted, it was taken down, so all posts not deleted by the man himself were still there when it went back up. Taking an account down is something they need to be able to do fast when they get a complaint about a channel or find abuse prior to investigating (because terror wrists). So the review process (if any) would come after that.
>There should be something like a two-step process
Call me old-fashioned, but I think you are taking Twitter _way_ too seriously.
Of course, that is also the case with Trump - the whole idea of basing a major part of POTUSs communication strategy* on Twitter has a certain comic opera feel to it, doesn't it?
* I use that word loosely with Trump.
Twitter's absolutely within their rights- and indeed responsibilities in many localities- to remove accounts without their registered user's permission. It's not YOUR account. It's /their/ network and /their/ account, which you use with /their/ permission. People seem to forget that.
What? Nobody forgets that. Has anyone suggested that Twitter doesn't have the right to delete its own data (user accounts) ?
"PR is more normally handled by services like a news agency or press conference where a multitude of outlets get to know what you tell them."
and filter it, and spin it poorly, and spend weeks harping on a single word or tricky phrase (including omissions of same) and that's why Trump _BYPASSES_ them. "He said XXX" or "He didn't say XXX" becoming "news" for a month. Yeah, that'll help.
If Trump didn't use twitter, he'd have a blog. The thing is, it's working. Look how many people are *IRRITATED* by it! Then look at *WHO* is irritated, and you can see what Trump's doing. It's like "Am I getting to you? Am I getting to you? Am I getting to you?"
"Look how many people are *IRRITATED* by it"
I think the word you're looking for is "alarmed" because we feel it gives an insight into the mind of one of our great national leaders.
It's worth repeating something that comes very shortly after the previous quotation:
"One of the reasons for trying to maintain impenetrable secrecy around Government Ministers is that without it many would make themselves laughing stocks within days or -- at most -- weeks."
If a single Twitter employee, just one, can delete the account of a public figure with 41M followers with no checks and balances...
Someone like Trump has the visibility to get his account restored. What about a Twitter employee that deletes your account because he doesn't like your position on Star Trek vs. Star Wars?
1 - if he has those rights, he was probably part of the policy enforcement team
2 - I don't even think they can do something to that employee in court, because all he did was his job - Trump's account has been WAY over the bar they have set themselves from even before he became President..
Seems like something at Twitter is clearly broken and needs to be fixed.
The very concept of Twitter is broken as it allows broadcasting of all sorts of trash to a mass audience. That's why the Senate started talking about broadcast licenses for Twitter, Google and Facebook..
"
What about a Twitter employee that deletes your account because he doesn't like your position on Star Trek vs. Star Wars?
"
Then you would no longer have a Twitter account. Which would probably make you more productive, more sociable and better liked. You could always demand your money back.
What about a Twitter subscriber who is busily coordinating a terrorist attack in real time, but cannot be stopped because the only senior Twitter employees who have the access rights to delete accounts are unavailable for the next few hours?
"What about a Twitter employee that deletes your account because he doesn't like your position on Star Trek vs. Star Wars?"
that would be a trivial example. a more realistic one involves politics and religious beliefs [which is why Trump's account was deleted by that "rogue employee", no doubt].
ARROGANT activist asshats need to just let people say/do what they want. But they're CONTROL FREAKS and FASCISTS. They should just wear brown shirts and swastika arm bands so they'll be easier to identify.
I really hate this "fake news" moniker. It was previously good enough to use the traditional terms "hoax", "inaccurate", "false" etc. All it does is comment on the man's vocabulary and the plethora of sycophants in this world.
I don't tweet (since I'm not a twit) and don't know the rules, but I regularly see quoted hate from this man that surely must be breaking them. This ex-employee appears to have been the only person with the cajones to apply the rules to this "fake president" (Trump certainly doesn't act like a real one).
It is a shame his parents didn't call him Iggy Donald Ian Oliver Trump to make it easier for the world to stop taking notice of his rantings.
This post has been deleted by its author
But "Fake News" doesn't mean those things. It means "reported stuff that Donald Trump and those who follow his every utterance do not agree with".
In the "post truth" world of Trump, you can make facts go away by wishing it, even if you know them to be true.
The coal jobs are coming back. The wall will be paid for by Mexico. We'd all be better off if immigrants went home. {Pick your ethnic group} is demonstrably less human than my ethnic group. The sea level is not rising.
All these are easily falsifiable, but you can rest easy repeating them if you label the arguments against as "Fake News".
> I really hate this "fake news" moniker. It was previously good enough to use the traditional terms "hoax", "inaccurate", "false" etc.
The problem with terms like "hoax", "inaccurate", and "false" is that they're used to describe things that aren't true or didn't really happen.
OTOH, the phrase "fake news" is generally used to describe things that _did_ happen and statements that _are_ true.
HTH
...one of the long-suffering reality-based people in the West Wing guessed that the president's Twitter password was 'djt' and used it to close the account. When Trump couldn't log in for his regular nvarchar(140) brain dump, he asked for a password reset, reactivated his account and set his new password to
[Answers on a postcard]
I'm not sure that that will save him. Even with all the speling mistaks, he probably only has a useful vocabulary of a few hundred words (say a hundred, and three ways of spelling each), and I doubt he can remember anything for long enough to type a password of more than two words ('what was I typing ... have to start again ... Bad!').
Not that I suggest trying to attack his accounts, of course: that would be bad and, well, bad.
Ah, so Twitter CAN restore deleted tweets then? Now could they please explain that to the FBI?
Twitter didn't say that deleted accounts aren't recoverable. They said that tweets (content) deleted by account holders are *generally* not recoverable. Doesn't seem absurd based on observations and semi-sensible engineering decisions.
Firstly - it seems like they don't delete things in real time, something comes along an jettisons things; but they're just hidden until that happens. Secondly when you "delete" a whole account it probably gets archived so it can be reactivated, even after that point. There's sensible evidence of this. If you wanted to kill all Trumps tweets you'd have to delete his actual tweets, and they'd probably live for a short period.
On top of that I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter make extra effort to back up accounts of people with large follower accounts - in case something happens. I know I would.
Wrap some high-level management explanatory BS around the core message of "my middle finger slipped on the keyboard" to obfuscate culpability. And while you might be surprised at it, I think you'll find that some credibility has been gained by that poor soul in some quarters and countries.
Actually, we need for someone to pin a medal on the lad and have a parade in his honor. Personally, I hire him in a minute for ingenuity and bravery. But yes, some companies will take their revenge on him as well as the blond guy in charge.
One could reference any of the "Last great act of defiance" memes/posters as perhaps that's where the inspiration came from.
Not so fast. As I said earlier elsewhere:
1 - the fact that he had the rights to delete accounts suggests he was in the enforcement team
2 - there is nobody on the planet other than the utterly deluded who can consider Trump's account to have been operated within the bounds of the rules Twitter set themselves, so the guy was actually still doing his job.
I wish them luck in court with that one. If they try that, you will be looking at the faster crowdsourced defence fund ever established - and worse, it could dump their share price..
That court case would be a media circus. Twitter and Trump would probably want to stay clear. Also yeah, Twitter's own ToS and internal guidance probably validate the action.
If I was twitter I'd have workflow in place that prevents accounts of a certain size or type from being deleted without a cosign from somebody in management.
@Richard 45
I have always detested that term for the US President. None have been, nor will be my leader. It's an anachronism originally created from necessity during WWII and resurrected in times of crisis.
As your current incumbent has woeful leadership skill and goes against everything your once-great country stood for even your country can not be considered free - I would rather visit a tin-pot African dictatorship than set foot in the USA while he is "in charge".
Leader of the Free World is also totally inappropriate for the Orange Loon as he seems to want to become ever more insular and alienate your country's friends and allies. As an outsider he appears to me to be the most backward, unpatriotic and un-American individual. He is good at marketing himself which seems to be the only thing that matter these days.
But if you're going to take down 1 account (I don't see anyone else complaining of losing theirs) that would have to be the one. A real "surgical strike" with no collateral damage.
Or as a Chinese commentard might put it.
"Trump silent. The running dog has been muzzled at last."
Whilst it might seem to most readers to have been a prank by someone leaving anyway, from the information given there is the slim possibility that this became the employee's last day once this action (deliberate or otherwise) was discovered, said last day not necessarily being his initial choice.
In which case any subsequent unfair dismissal claim could be interesting....
So someone had the control over Trumps account.
This is actually quite scary when you think about it and realistically the President shouldn't be on twitter like this.
Lets play what if?
What if they had posted a tweet "I have just launched a Nuclear Weapon against North Korea, THE TIME FOR TALK IS OVER"?
Does this mean Twitter could cause the end of the world as we know it?
.. Having the ability to delete the account of Trump (or whoever) would not also imply ability to make posts with that account.
Deleting a users account (in all software solutions I have ever seen) does not mean you have / need that users login credentials ... it means you, on whatever system you use for admin, have appropriate rights to delete.
@tiggity
So you could delete the account and create a new one in the same name?
I say potato you say tomato.
In most software solutions I've seen the ability to reset an account is usually applied with the ability to delete. I would actually put delete higher on the level of permissions than reset password.
"I have just launched a Nuclear Weapon against North Korea, THE TIME FOR TALK IS OVER"?
I remember an incident years ago, when Reagan was POTUS. He was getting ready to for an interview, and said something along the lines of "We have just agreed to outlaw Russia - we begin bombing in 20 minutes". He thought he was just saying something to let the sound tech set the mic level, but the statement was actually broadcast live to 'x' million viewers/listeners.
What's funny was the SOVIET reaction to it. It scared them. It probably sped up some of the nuclear proliferation treaties and maybe some of their own internal reforms... what was that called, 'perestroika' or something like that?
You strike me as the kind of person who would lick an uncovered power socket to check if the mains was still on.
Does this mean Twitter could cause the end of the world as we know it?
In the beginning, no-one was sure of the legitimacy of the Donald's twitter outbursts, until it was confirmed that these are presidential statements, so a guy made a bot that turns them in to correctly formatted White House Press Office releases.
So - Yes.Icon is what it will lead to.
That a staffer could delete a profile with 41 million followers, one belonging to the leader of the free world no less, is staggering. And also awesome. ®
That profile, with 41 million followers, one belonging to the leader of the free world no less, could, with one ill-considered throwaway remark trigger a nuclear response by the leader of a less free society is something to be worried about. And also awesome. ®
Twitter is an unusual place. They will ban you for small idiotic things. But if you are the President Cheetos then you can call people pathetic, sad, weird, crooked. You can incite war and generally do anything you damn well please. Twitter should stick to the T&C and ban the orange twerp.
it would be interesting, as an experiment, to set up any twitter account and just copy all the abuse entered by Trump's account. Just to see how long that account would last before it was shut due to violation of terms and cond
Unfortunately, by the same token that lets them delete your account if they "feel" you're violating whatever even if it's painfully obvious to any sane person you are doing no such thing, they are free to _not_ apply any of their so-called "terms" by simply going "nu-uh!" if anyone points out a violation.
In fact, one could arguably sue any company today for calling their terms of service "terms of service", suggesting the existence of an objective aspect that clearly doesn't exist. What they should be called instead is "guidelines regarding things that tend to make us not like you and get you kicked out, unless we happen to really like you in which case never mind, you can do whatever the fuck you want for as long as you feel like it".
What they should be called instead is "guidelines regarding things that tend to make us not like you and get you kicked out, unless we happen to really like you in which case never mind, you can do whatever the fuck you want for as long as you feel like it".A nice, short phrase like "US Justice System"?
A nice, short phrase like "US Justice System"?
No, that's misleading too, on account of lacking justice for people who don't have money or a white skin. "US Legal system" is more precise, as it doesn't make any promises that are not kept.
I thought for a moment, when I read the headline: they kicked him out for breaking the rules! But then, reality knocked on my brain and the eyes confirmed that: there's NO WAY in the world they would enforce their rules against everybody across the board, including the prez, it was merely a parting "fuck you" from a departed. Will never happen again, nosir! Being the biggest bully in the world does help!
Rose McGowan had her account suspended for making posts about her abuse experiences.
Drumpf is allowed to rant, rave, abuse, threaten, falsely accuse and lie but nothing happens. He doesn't have 41Million followers. He has 41 bots constantly working on his numbers.
Well done to The Legend. It is a regret that it only lasted 11 minutes.
In the aftermath, some Twitter users branded the as-yet-unnamed employee as a hero.
“Not all heroes wear capes,” tweeted out British journalist Oliver Bullough, on learning that the account had been deactivated by human error.
http://www.newsweek.com/twitter-employee-who-deleted-trumps-account-being-hailed-hero-700633
I guess this is the level of service that all Twitter users get?
No, normally it's much better. It's unusual that an account that deserves to be closed is online again after 11 minutes. I guess that's what they're investigating right now because I can't see anything else worth investigating in this story. Someone did the job they were supposed to do, it should not have been so easy to undo it, even after that person left the company, clearly that needs fixing.
I hope that clears that up :)
Twitter's statement on the matter seems carefully constructed in that it allows an ambiguous interpretation.
Did the guy decide that on the last day of his job he'd delete the moron's account? Or did it turn out to be the last day of his job after he deleted the moron's account. Probably the former, but the latter is a possibility.
Either way, the guy deserves a --------->
Twitter deletes parody accounts at the drop of a hat.
Every so often Southeastern trains get all upset about being parodied and start a game of whack-a-mole with the parody accounts.
Generally speaking, sanity reigns again fairly quickly and they realise doing this has a negative PR effect. Mostly making them even more of a laughing stock.
That's what everyone would be saying if they agreed with what was posted on the account. Be honest with yourself - if you change the account here to someone you like does your response to this change?
That's the problem with universal freedoms - they apply to everyone.
My point is that if this happened to someone else, that having their account disabled like this and it just disappearing would have people screaming about it being to suppress the right to free speech. Substitute Al Sharpton for Donald Trump (trying for someone toward the opposite end of the political spectrum) and the same people responding about how 'great' it is this happened would have a completely different reaction.
Not everyone agrees with what Al Sharpton says either, but that's not the group chiming in about how 'cool' it is that this happened to Trump.
Even though, as you say, having a Twitter account is not an inalienable right.
What hate? *This* is mirth.
It's not as if we're laughing at someone running over Trump's cat, or driving a truck into one of those atrocious buildings of his. "11 minutes without a Twitter account" is not an injury, merely an insult. You, and the twat-in-chief, should learn the difference.
I've thought this for some time.
The President (and other officials) should never be using something like twitter. Hell, they have all these secure protocols, official press briefings, secret service agents everywhere... yet some commercial internet company is responsible for (what is, in effect) the official view of the POTUS.
Is there a secure line from the white house to twitter hq? Are there secret service agents in the twitter offices, or at key network points?
The whole idea of using twitter like this is a serious security breach (and twitter themselves are totally innocent in this).
POTUS is breaching security, why can't the courts stop him? Why can't his advisers?
Hell, set up trumptwit.whitehouse.gov securely for him to play with instead - I'm sure it would get the followers.
Yep, because if your account were inappropriately disabled everything from it should disappear. No way you (or anyone else) that was put in that situation would be unhappy about everything in your account history going away because one person decided you didn't have the right to have the account.
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I am glad someone deleted the presidents twitter account. Our president has a white house spokesperson to inform the media and public what is going on with his administration. Twitter is for inviting me and my family to the white house for dinner. and not to trash other people for saying what they believe. The American people were smart enough to see through the bullshit the democrats were spreading to say no to their candidate. We are smart enough to see the bullshit the news media and public officials are spreading around today.
ah, well, that ex-twitter employee won't receive any severance pay, may well be sued by both twitter and trump, and will never work in the USA again.
I actually expect that all that really happened was the account was disable, not deleted which as long as that ability was within their normal roles and responsibilities (ie, he was authorized to disable accounts) and he was still officially working for twitter during that time (ie, he hasn't officially quit) then really, nothing can be done. I guess the same could be said for deletion too (again as long as it was within his normal roles and responsibility).
He could be fired, but he was already out the door.
About the only way he can really get in trouble is if he performed an unauthorized role, he already quit and was therefore accessing computer system illegally.
They could possibly civilly sue him for damages but a judge would laugh that out of court as an 11 minute recovery obviously meant there was little financial impact to the company.
ps - I am using "he" generally as it could be a She, but usually only us guys are that stupid...
Working in contracted customer-support centers can be stunning experience in being mistreated as an employee. I've been there, got the bumper sticker, T-Shirt, prematurely gray hair, health failure and emotional scars... So I'm not surprised at that employee for doing just what he/she did! In my time in hell at one of those customer-support centers I've seen people leave horizontally, someone fall unconscious on a support call, others rage quit, throw head sets and even monitors.
Perhaps this situation is begging President Trump to do something about these Corporations abusive behavior toward working American employees at customer-support centers?
...they can't do anything to the contractor as was their last day and they clearly had the required permissions. Or even if they didn't and did something naughty to get those permissions, I'm assuming they still can't do anything as that person has left.
To cover themselves anyway, they could of just simply put a note on the account
"Disabled due to constant violation of Twitters T&Cs".
That would be correct and accurate but because of who Trump is, they let him get away with it.
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