A Twitter employee deactivated Donald Trump’s personal account on their last day of work, the company said on Thursday, likely meaning the action was deliberate.
The move by the employee – who has not been named – meant that the president’s @realdonaldtrump account was down for 11 minutes.
During the brief period of downtime, shortly before 4pm Pacific time (11pm GMT), anyone going to the @realDonaldTrump Twitter page would see the message “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”
Olivia Solon
It was puzzling to read the reactions on Twitter to this temporary deactivation: many were glad, relieved even, that the President of the United States could no longer tweet. To me, this reaction is very immature: account deactivation does not mean that Donald Trump magically goes away; he may still use the official Potus account, or switch to another social network to express his views, despised by many as they may be. And it definitely doesn’t remove him as President, or any harm he may still do from that position of power.
It seems to me Americans are experts at ignoring problems in their society, thinking they will simply go away: racism is still present, as is sexism and xenophobia, and Trump exploited this to propel himself to power. People should face reality and tackle these entrenched issues, not celebrate when things they don’t like are hidden from public view.
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
Post a Comment