Former Twitter employee who deleted Trump’s account says it was a mistake
On November 2nd, President Donald Trump's Twitter account was temporarily deleted.
Twitter described the unnamed perpetrator as a "customer support employee who did this on the employee's last day." Trump called the person a "rogue employee."
Many Twitter users celebrated the mysterious rogue employee for the 11 minutes that Trump's account was inactive. Former Republican congressman David Jolly even called for the person to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Today, Bahtiyar Duysak revealed himself as the former Twitter employee in question. Duysak, who was born and raised in Germany, was working as a fixed-term contractor for Twitter under a U.S. work and study visa.
Duysak tells TechCrunch that his last day at the social media company was uneventful. During his final hour, he received a notification that Trump's Twitter account had been reported for violating Twitter's terms of service.
"As a final, throwaway gesture, he put the wheels in motion to deactivate it," writes Ingrid Lunden for TechCrunch. "Then he closed his computer and left the building."
"It was definitely a mistake, and if I am involved in this I really apologize if I hurt anyone," says Duysak. "I didn't do anything on purpose."
He says that he never believed that the President's account would or could actually be deactivated.
Twitter says that the President's account is typically protected from deactivation. The company told TechCrunch that even if Trump's tweets violate the company's terms of service , it is in the public interest to keep them public because they are newsworthy.
Duysak maintains that the account suspensions was the result of "a number of coincidences" and that he did not break protocol in taking the next steps to address the violation report. "I didn't hack anyone. I didn't do anything which I wasn't authorized to do. I didn't go to any site or tool where I wasn't supposed to be at," explains Duysak. "I didn't do any crime."
Due to the media frenzy around the President's deleted account, Duysak has lost much of his privacy. "I didn't do any crime or anything evil, but I feel like Pablo Escobar," he said, "and slowly it's getting really annoying."
As for becoming a Nobel Laureate, he is certain that there are more qualified and deserving individuals. "I do not deserve to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize," he says. "But I love Twitter and I love America."
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