Man Who Momentarily Deactivated Donald Trump’s Twitter Account Comes Forward
The man who momentarily deactivated President Donald Trump’s account by accident is coming forward. The president’s page was shut down for exactly 11 minutes in early November, causing a huge uproar. It was soon reactivated and Twitter explained that a departing employee had erroneously deleted Trump’s page.
According to People, the man who mistakenly deactivated Donald Trump’s Twitter account is Bahtiyar Duysak. He worked as a social media contractor and was working his last day on the job when he shut down the president’s Twitter page. Duysak tells Tech Crunch that was in the customer support department of the Trust and Safety division, which responds to reports of Twitter violations and bad behavior. His interview can be seen in the video below.
Duysak is a German citizen who came to America on a student work visa. He owns up to what he did and explains that deactivating Donald Trump’s Twitter account was a genuine mistake. Part of why he may have accidentally deleted the president’s account was due to being tired after having a “wild time in America.”
Bahtiyar Duysak went on to say that he was responding to a report of bad behavior, not realizing it was the President of the United States that was being reported. The gravity of his actions wasn’t realized until the media went crazy over the blackout. He describes the incident as consisting of “a number of coincidences” during his last day of work.
Duysak, who’s back in his German hometown, insists that he didn’t hack anyone or engage in any actions that he wasn’t authorized to do. He hoped to continue on with his “ordinary life” after accidentally deleting Donald Trump’s Twitter account. The young was adamant that he didn’t mean to silence the president by accidentally deactivating his Twitter page. He continues that although he didn’t commit any crime, he feels as if he’s been made out to be some evildoer and it’s “getting really annoying.”
Is Duysak going to forge ahead with a career in the tech field? He’s not going that direction, but loves Twitter and the United States.
When Donald Trump Twitter account was deactivated, the social media platform’s Government and Elections team first tweeted a message blaming it on “human error” before announcing it was a rogue employee who wanted to shut down the president’s tweets during his final day on the job.
The president responded to the accident by tweeting, “My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.”
Man Who Deactivated Donald Trump’s Twitter Account Reveals His Identity https://t.co/WWzBcPEr9w
— People (@people) November 30, 2017
ABC News reports that Twitter “modifies” it’s usual standards over abuse for certain accounts, such Trump’s due to the “newsworthiness” of their messages. On September 25, a number of tweets ran down its policy by stating it considers a number of factors when determining whether tweets violate its its rules; newsworthiness and messages pertaining to public interest are given more leeway.
Bahtiyar Duysak doesn’t want to evade the media or hide from anyone, but does want to live his life as normally as possible. He’s had to delete a lot of friends from Facebook because reporters were stalking him after he accidentally deactivated Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
[Featured Image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
