United States President Donald Trump’s Twitter account temporary went off on Thursday but has since been restored says the social media company.
The @realdonaldtrump account, which was down for about 11 minutes, was deactivated by an employee of Twitter who was on his last day on the job.
Although @POTUS, the official account of the United States President was unaffected, the latest incident has raised questions on the security of the president’s account especially on who can access the President’s personal account.
The account vanished at around 6:45pm on Thursday as visitors to the page met with the message, “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” It came back on by 7 p.m. without “@realDonaldTrump” displaying.
The social media company then posted a statement saying the President’s account was deactivated due to human error by an employee.
Twitter, which has said it will investigate the incident, is also under scrutiny with regards to the role it played in spreading Russian propaganda during the 2016 U.S Presidential elections.
“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,” the statement read.
The company had suspended other high-profile accounts in the past for violating its terms and conditions but there has not been a case where an employee has acted to take down the account of a well-known person seemingly on their own.
A spokeswoman from Twitter said it was still unclear who the employee was, how that employee got access to the president’s account and whether any security breaches led to the subsequent deactivation.
“A lot” of employees at Twitter can suspend a user’s account, a former employee of the company said. But far fewer — only hundreds — have the power to deactivate one. There was some discussion at the company about special protections on verified or high-profile accounts, but that extra measures were “never implemented,” the former employee said.
Donald Trump joined Twitter in March 2009 and has made more than 36,000 tweets.
