
“realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error” - danso
https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926238960594178048
======
danso
Hope they release some kind of post-mortem report -- even if it was done out
of malice, admitting that -- and providing some details on how this will be
prevented in the future -- is much better than a vague excuse that leaves
everything to the imagination.

Having never worked anywhere on the scale of Twitter, the only non-malicious
kind of human error I can think of is like when Google accidentally
blacklisted all of Internet as malware [0]. What would be the accidental
step/keystroke that happened to target the most controversial user account?
Unless @realdonaldtrump was part of the manual-moderation queue and a human
accidentally approved the ban.

But that would seem to indicate that @realdonaldtrump (and other massive
accounts) don't have a special flag to be treated differently, which sounds
even worse of a bespoke-workflow-nightmare. @realdonaldtrump must get receive
so many abuse reports that it would constantly show up in the moderation queue
otherwise.

[0] [https://www.wired.com/2009/02/google-
glitch-b/](https://www.wired.com/2009/02/google-glitch-b/)

edit: Update from Twitter:

[https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744](https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744)

> _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._

Wow, I imagined ACL/auditing being not completely disciplined -- such as SREs
having root-tier access. I never would have thought that a _customer support_
employee had unchecked power to disable accounts. It makes some sense that
they would have autonomy to quickly deal with obviously bad/fake accounts. But
not with Trump-tier accounts. Not just because of Trump, but all the other
major accounts/brands who use Twitter as a primary communication medium.

~~~
manicdee
My guess is someone didn’t double-check the account name that had received
1000 abuse flags in the last half hour and just followed procedure.

~~~
anonu
My guess is that there are certain accounts that have separate procedures.
Twitter is in the black this quarter for one reason - and I'm pretty sure its
the @realDonaldTrump....

If your company was being propped up by 1 individual - wouldn't you put
special procedures in place to make sure nothing inadvertent happened? (EDIT -
GUESS NOT!!
[https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744](https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744))

As a side note: I started using Twitter a lot more to follow @realDonaldTrump.
It doesn't matter what I think about him. The reality is we live in a new news
paradigm where every POTUS tweet is news before the actual news writes about
it. Thats powerful... I'll go straight to the source then...

~~~
IgorPartola
It’s not the source though. He basically posts his reactions to stuff he hears
on Fox and Friends. It’s pretty well known that he can keep his attention on
primary source briefings that every other president has relied upon before
him.

Unless you count a thousand word CNN article about a short tweet as news. I
don’t. I skip those articles because basically it’s just journalists being
baited.

------
firefoxd
What I find interesting, is the sudden power Twitter just realised they have.

Imagine this, they are one button away from taking away the US president main
mean of communication.

This is akin to a country doing a military parade, showing off their arms.

~~~
Johnny555
And just a few sentences away from declaring war.

If someone took over Trump's twitter and detailed how bombers were in-route to
take out North Korea's nuclear capability, would Kim Jong Un wait for
independent confirmation before he launched his missile(s)?

~~~
rbanffy
Isn't it terribly irresponsible then to allow a service that's subject to such
issues become the main form of communication for a government?

~~~
tantalor
Ssshhhhh, the emperor's clothes are so handsome!

~~~
rbanffy
The emperor has the best clothes.

------
uladzislau
A bunch of tweets disappeared from my Twitter account in early March of this
year without any reason or trace. I had them cached on Twitter mobile app so I
had the proof it's not my imagination. I reached out to Twitter support,
didn't get any reply and wasn't able to figure out what happened :/

~~~
r3bl
From my experience, you have to be very, very loud if you want to reach them.

This is how I managed to reach them in July:
[https://twitter.com/i/moments/878356515622617088](https://twitter.com/i/moments/878356515622617088)

------
porfirium
"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."

[https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744](https://twitter.com/TwitterGov/status/926267806261407744)

------
orky56
Curious to know how locked down permissions are at Twitter for this type of
thing. After yesterday's news about RT & Twitter, I'm wary of the potential
personal involvement Twitter has with US politics & Trump.

------
f_allwein
Seems a bit weird that one employee can inadvertently deactivate such a big
account by mistake. You would think there are double checks in place, warnings
etc ...

Edit: typo

~~~
porfirium
There probably are checks in place. My bet is on an employee's joke.

~~~
giobox
You would need to be remarkably stupid and/or immature to switch off a primary
communication channel of the elected leader of 320 million people as a "joke",
regardless of what you think of Trump.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
I'd give 'em a high five. And buy them a beer after they got rightly fired.

~~~
mywittyname
They might not be around to buy a beer. I'm sure the Secret Service/FBI could
trump up some kind of Federal charges for such a thing.

------
indescions_2017
No stretch of the imagination to parse "inadvertently deactivated due to human
error" as equating to "internal sabotage for the cause of rebellion" ;)

I can recommend PBS Frontline's doc "Putin's Revenge" for deep background on
how we got to where we are today. It's fascinating to see "unintended
consequences" of a series of US foreign policy decisions: Libya, Sochi 2014
Ukraine protests, an "f-bomb" in a a random diplomatic cable. Lead to a
compounding of grievances for Moscow. And how pushback was inevitable.

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-
revenge/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-revenge/)

TBH I was decidedly underwhelmed by Twitter general counsel's testimony before
the Senate judiciary. Just really unserious, lacking an appreciation of the
gravity of the situation. Social media was weaponized by a foreign power to
sow dissent, destabilize democracy and ultimately weaken American influence
abroad.

Regardless of your personal politics, the narrative has morphed into a
national security issue. An that means every startup or internet based
company. Basically everyone. Needs to have a security policy in place to avoid
persecution and or liability.

~~~
remarkEon
>Social media was weaponized by a foreign power to sow dissent, destabilize
democracy...

We need to stop this nonsense. The Russians spent a few hundred thousand on
social media ads in this election cycle, and frankly a lot of them explicitly
supported Progressive causes. Meanwhile, Trump and Clinton spent $81
_million_. Scroll Facebook for 90 seconds and you'll probably see a dozen ads
"impressed" on you. Can you remember a single one? Three?

>...and ultimately weaken American influence abroad.

Seems like we've been happily doing that ourselves for quite a while now.

~~~
jochung
The irony of American officials complaining about foreign interference really
is amazingly delicious. STFU, hypocrites, and start looking in the mirror.
There is half a century of global interference to look back on.

Given how e.g. reddit's news and political subs turned into a Hillary fort
right as she was pumping millions into her own social media ops, I have zero
sympathy for their crocodile tears. They don't hate the Russians for doing
this, they hate them because their own attempts at it failed and backfired,
and they need a scapegoat.

------
Mountain_Skies
If nothing else this points to poor internal controls on user accounts at
Twitter.

~~~
jcims
I would imagine most people in traditional IT roles would find some jaw
droppers if they spent a day at Twitter HQ.

------
hartator
Kind of interesting that Trump’s account is worth so much to Twitter, and they
seem to care so little.

~~~
always_good
Trump is probably the best thing to happen to Twitter in some time. His tweets
are the only reason I even see tweets anymore in my life.

So it's funny when I see the CEO use Twitter to attack Trump.

------
deanCommie
Honestly the right will freak out about this and scream some form of left wing
censorship, but...

The first amendment only extends to government laws. Twitter, as a private
entity has no obligation or legal requirement to give hateful speech a
soapbox, even when it's promoted by the "leader of the free world."

They would lose millions of users, but they might ultimately provide a net
benefit to the future of western democracy if they simply banned Donald Trump
from twitter.

~~~
ImSkeptical
I see arguments like this from time to time about free speech, and it always
strikes me as missing the point or being myopic.

Free speech isn't important because it's in the Constitution, it's in the
Constitution because it's important. Sure, Twitter wouldn't be violating the
law if they banned Trump, but they would absolutely be violating the more
important ideal of free speech.

~~~
shepardrtc
So they should be required to keep his account up no matter what happens?

~~~
marcoperaza
That’s not what he said. If I say “Twitter should not ban shepardrtc”, I am
not saying that Twitter should not ban you no matter what you do.

As for Trump, there is certainly a case for treating his account differently.
He is the President of the United States. These aren’t the musings of someone
who doesn’t matter. They are the thoughts, intentions, and announcements of
the most powerful man in the world. In the same way that Twitter wouldn’t
censor horrifying but true news, they shouldn’t censor the President. Anything
that the President tweets _is_ news.

Imagine if they banned him and he moved to another site. Would Twitter then
ban people for reporting, on Twitter, what the President said?

~~~
panic
I agree that they should treat his account differently, but in the other
direction. The fact that his words matter so much means they should be held to
a higher standard, not a lower one.

~~~
GSimon
but a higher standard of what? His words will be more scrutinized but beyond
that should a higher standard of censorship be implored? If that's the
underlying suggestion than who's this arbiter of good speech and how might
that go about working?

------
gb_
My bet is they show tweets out of context to reviewers and they can ban based
on the content.

~~~
ceejayoz
I don't think so - the message was "nothing here", not the suspension message.

~~~
gb_
You're right. Good call.

------
sixstringtheory
If it wasn’t on purpose, then they must have some interesting special logic
around his account in particular (maybe others?) that was maybe accidentally
altered/enabled. I’m just curious what the nature of that special logic is.
Maybe to exempt it from context-free abuse review, as gb_ said below?

~~~
ProAm
I mean he did wish for people to get the death sentence earlier today, Im sure
that goes against Twitters Code Of Conduct [1] , but since he saved Twitter
from going under Im sure he's got a lifetime get out of jail free card.

[1]
[https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175050#](https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175050#)

~~~
nodesocket
This person killed 8 innocent people by plowing into them with a car. If one
of those persons was a loved one of your own, would you want him to get the
death penalty?

~~~
ProAm
Im just arguing that Twitter has a Code of Conduct [1] and Trump definitely
falls across that line frequently, I could easily see how he should be banned
but probably has special privilege as for he is solely responsible for saving
the business from demise.

[1]
[https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175050#](https://support.twitter.com/articles/20175050#)

~~~
nodesocket
Sure, but I think you're missing the bigger point. It's not about Twitter's
business, it's about free speech and the fact that he is the fairly elected
president of the United States. You can't pick and choose. I'm sure I'll
continue to get downvoted though.

~~~
kbenson
You're getting downvoted because your reply was a non sequitur. Nobody was
making a claim as to whether he should have said what he said, just that it
might have triggered some automatic controls in place at Twitter that might
have contributed to this event.

------
dahdum
Happened after the markets closed - would be very interesting to see the
impact while open. I'd wager on a mini flash crash as bots short sell.

------
artur_makly
thats ok since i made a backup for him here :
[http://TrumpTweets.io](http://TrumpTweets.io)

https in the works!

------
thesmallestcat
Bugs, fat-fingers and misclicks don't care that you're the president.

------
Spooky23
I’m surprised they don’t do this anyway.

Whatever noteriety they get from Trump has to come with a cost. The words
“twitter” and “Trump” become more and more associated every day.

------
jackmott
Just act on the abuse reports and delete his account for real and do the world
a favor.

~~~
skrowl
Censorship of political rivals never does anyone a favor. How would you feel
if people had said this same thing about Obama? Isn't it enough that over 90%
of the mainstream (old) media coverage of Trump is negative for you? Do you
REALLY need to ban him on Twitter?

~~~
panic
Obama wasn't setting policy or doing "diplomacy" on Twitter. If he were, I'd
say the same thing. People asking for Twitter to ban Trump aren't all doing it
because of their political "side" \-- his use of the platform is harmful on
its own.

------
partiallypro
Of course this entire thread becomes a political circle jerk of people wanting
Trump banned from Twitter rather than the seemingly poor internal controls on
Twitter.

~~~
partiallypro
And now they admit it was an employee on their last day. So, yup, lack of
internal controls. Appreciate the downvotes.

[https://www.thewrap.com/trump-twitter-account-deleted-by-
cus...](https://www.thewrap.com/trump-twitter-account-deleted-by-customer-
service-employee-on-their-last-day/)

------
Muuuchem
Hey it's not a bug! New feature twitter is testing out! So far I hear it had
huge ratings!

------
amatecha
Human... "error"? Give that employee a raise!

~~~
amatecha
Laughing at the downvotes on this... :)

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

Especially please don't post comments going on about downvotes:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

