Trump’s account disappeared at around 6:45 p.m. ET Thursday, when visitors to the page were met with the message, “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”
By 7 p.m., it was back, and the Twittersphere began joking about the short-lived window of history without @realDonaldTrump.
“The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored,” the statement read. “We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.”
But two hours later, the company admitted that the deactivation wasn’t an accident at all: A preliminary investigation revealed that the account was taken offline “by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day.” Twitter said it was conducting a full internal review.
Early Friday, Trump blamed a “rogue employee” for pulling the plug.
Why it’s hot!
- Social Media security is always a priority for brands but incidents like this prove that there is always an element of control that is missing.
- While most community management teams employ strict security protocols, there was no way to prevent this from happening on the brand’s side.