At around 7 pm New York time, eagle eye Twitter followers suddenly noticed that Donald Trump’s personal Twitter @realDonaldTrump account did not exist. The news soon spread around the Twitterverse and beyond with everyone wondering why the outspoken President who has 41.7 million followers and regularly uses the platform to discuss subjects such as nuclear weapons, Vladimir Putin and to criticise political opponents had been deleted.
Obama and Clinton to blame?
Many theories were soon in circulation over who was responsible, with the jokes and memes coming in thick and fast.
Some even joking that Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama were responsible. 11 Minutes after the account went down TwitterGov (@Twittergov) themselves released a statement to say a Twitter customer service employee during their last day was responsible saying, "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,”
At present, the identity of the employee had not been revealed with the social media giant keeping it under wraps while an internal investigation begins.
Trump’s response to the incident was that it occurred to him beginning to "I guess the word must finally be getting out -and having an impact", he tweeted to his millions of followers.
My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 3 November 2017
Extraordinary power
Technical security experts have been quick to voice their concerns over the incident. Brian Schneier advises, ‘’Tech administrators have extraordinary power’’.
With someone as powerful as Donald Trump it could lead to disastrous consequences with Schneier going on to say, “The system guys in any company are like the plumbers, they can delete an account, copy material, take over – no one in the tech world is surprised about this.”
This morning it seemed that @realDonaldTrump account was still not quite back to normal with many of the millions of followers not appearing on the infamous account.
Future sabotage
With this happening to one of the world’s most prolific Twitter accounts, it is likely to be a question of time before others in the spotlight begin to question Twitter's security protocols, and how they can keep their accounts safe from sabotage.
Twitter is yet to confirm the findings of the ongoing internal investigation, or if the identity of the employee responsible will be publicly revealed.
