By: Savannah Smith | 11-03-2017 | News
Photo credit: Kaspars Grinvalds | Dreamstime.com

Trump’s Twitter Account Disappearance Raises Concerns On Twitter’s Security

Twitter is an important platform for President Donald Trump, no matter his disagreement with some of its policies and biases. For one, it provides him with a direct link to his strong support base and a means to convey his powerful messages the mainstream media often leave out or get wrong. Imagine the confusion and chaos then brought when Trump’s personal Twitter account, with the handle @realdonaldtrump, disappeared from the site for a good 11 minutes before 7 p.m. ET.

Speculations abound as to what could have happened to Trump’s Twitter account- or what was done to it. Many thought his account was suspended by Twitter. After minutes of deafening silence, Twitter’s Government and Elections team issued a series of tweets meant to shed light and clarification on what was once a mysterious incident of the disappearing Trump account.

Twitter first pinned the blame on “human error”, then followed up with another statement attributing what happened as the handiwork of a rogue employee who exploited his last day in office to do some harm to the President’s account and cut his link to his supporters.

Twitter’s first message said:” 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.”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Earlier today <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realdonaldtrump</a>’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.</p>&mdash; Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926238960594178048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 3, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The second tweet went: “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 continuing a full internal review.”’

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">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. <a href="https://t.co/mlarOgiaRF">https://t.co/mlarOgiaRF</a></p>&mdash; Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) <a href="https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 3, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Social media users also had a field day reacting to the temporary, albeit deliberate, suspension of Trump’s account. The President’s critics and haters predictably “celebrated” his all too brief disappearance from the popular platform. His supporters and believers, of course, expressed concern on what happened- or what was willfully, and maliciously, done to the President’s account.

The startling incident brought to the fore anew issues of Twitter’s security processes in safeguarding accounts, especially that of the most powerful user, no less than the U.S. President himself. How could one disgruntled employee take his rage on the President’s account, pray tell?

Two sources familiar with Twitter shared to Recode that employees on Twitter’s Trust and Safety team have the ability to suspend or remove accounts. A second source said, however, that such is limited.

The same source also shared that the social media platform once considered putting in place a safeguard in which it would require two employees to remove “important, notable” Twitter accounts. However, that proposal has never made it as a policy and was never implemented.

Another source revealed, on the other hand, that Twitter’s top employees including the CEO, cannot really delete an account, which is, in fact, being monitored via dashboards at Twitter. Still, another source said that anyone with the tech-savvy can surely figure out ways to go around the system.

Twitter certainly has a lot to answer for. Bottomline is, Twitter needs to be safer and more secure for its users, especially for the most powerful leader of the free world.

The President has not reacted on Twitter yet regarding his account’s eleven minutes of disappearance.

Source:

Twitter/@realdonaldtrump, @TwitterGov

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2 Comment/s
Anonymous No. 11024 2017-11-03 : 07:52

Mistakes happen. When I worked at Blackberry over 5 hears ago, I accidentally brought down the Mint's NY branch's email server for several hours because I had no idea what the fuck I was doing (this was at like 10pm on a Saturday, and only affected emails on phones)

Anonymous No. 11035 2017-11-03 : 11:08

IF it were a rogue employee Snowflake? The hiring community should know his name to avoid him.

Note: An easy way to avoid hiring the snowflake is not to hire any Tweeter people leaving in Late Oct/Early Nov.

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