FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Someone at Twitter 'Inadvertently' Deactivated Donald Trump's Account for 11 Minutes

According to the social media company this was 'human error by a Twitter employee.'
Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr

If you were on Twitter at all Thursday night you already know this: at around 7PM Eastern Time, Donald Trump's Twitter account was briefly deactivated. As it turns out, this was due to "human error by a Twitter employee."

During the 11 minutes his account was down, Twitter was abuzz with speculation about what had happened: Did the social network ban the president of the United States for something he said? Was he suddenly in violation of new policy regarding hate speech? Did it have something to do with the hearings on Capitol Hill about Russian trolls using social media to sow division among the American people?

Advertisement

Before too much speculation could occur, Donald Trump's account was back online, and according to Twitter, it was all just an accident. Here's the company's official response:

We reached out to Twitter for more details about how and why this happened, but the company declined to offer further comment.

Update: 10:28 PM EST: Twitter further clarified that Donald Trump's account was deleted by a customer support employee on their last day at the company: