If you felt a serendipitous moment of peace Thursday evening at around 7 p.m., you weren’t the only one: for just 11 minutes, @realDonaldTrump did not exist.
Trump’s Twitter account, which has over 40 million followers and 35,000 Tweets, is pretty notorious at this point. Whether he’s lobbing sexist insults at female news presenters or vague threats at North Korea, his feed teeters between upsetting, infuriating and terrifying.
The account returned shortly after its deactivation, and Twitter representatives were quick to address the issue. “Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee,” @TwitterGov wrote, and added that the team would continue to investigate the situation. Hours later, Twitter clarified that the deactivation happened at the hands of an employee on their final day:
Photo: Twitter
Buzzfeed News reported that, according to another former member of Twitter’s staff, many employees are able to suspend accounts, though fewer are able to deactivate them. “There was discussion that for verified accounts or high profile ones, there’d be special protections…but it was never implemented,” said the source.
As of today, however, it seems that might change. Though a lot of the Internet is calling the rogue employee a hero, @TwitterGov posted that the site has “implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again” — sadly.
Photo: Twitter.
Top photo via Twitter.
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