President Donald Trump’s infamous Twitter account mysteriously disappeared briefly on Thursday evening, and the internet quickly took notice.
Admittedly, when I saw the first few tweets re: the account’s disappearance, I had no idea what they were in reference to. I’m shocked by how quickly — and how many — people realized the page was gone.
Tweets on my own timeline indicated the account was down anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes, but Twitter’s government account (who knew that was a thing?) tweeted a statement later Wednesday addressing the situation:
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.
— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
2017 is so weird, y’all.
UPDATE: Reports say the deactivation was deliberate — specifically, the account was deactivated by a Twitter employee on their last day at the company. Dang.
Reactions to that news also was swift:
"We have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day" pic.twitter.com/mVB2Pwc8rv
— Jessica Winter (@winterjessica) November 3, 2017