'Rogue employee' who took down Trump's Twitter was a contractor: NYT
- The employee who deleted Trump's Twitter account was a contractor, according to The New York Times.
- The event raises questions about an important security issue facing social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook.
- @realdonaldtrump appeared to be deleted for about 11 minutes Thursday night.
Twitter said that President Donald Trump's Twitter account was "inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee," after @realdonaldtrump appeared to be deleted for about 11 minutes Thursday night.
That employee was a contractor, according to a report in The New York Times, citing two sources briefed on the matter.
Twitter said earlier that the employee deactivated the account on their last day of work. The company said Friday that it had "implemented safeguards" in response to the incident, but declines to share details about its security precautions.
"The discovery highlights a difficult issue for Twitter, as well as other technology companies that rely on large amounts of contract workers to handle sensitive work," the Times wrote.
Hundreds of employees have the capability to delete the accounts of accounts belonging to users the company refers to as "very important tweeters" or VITs, according to the Times report.
Twitter did not respond to an emailed request for comment. The company said on Twitter that it was conducting an investigation into the deletion of the president's account. The official @POTUS account was not deleted.
Click here to read the full article from The New York Times.