For 11 minutes on November 2, 2017, the world was restored to a moment of peace when Donald Trump’s Twitter account went silent. It had been mysteriously deactivated.
Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee. The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored. We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.
— Government (@Gov) November 3, 2017
Turns out, it was “inadvertently deactivated” by a man on his last day at Twitter. And now we know it was an accident. Sort of.
TechCrunch tracked down the contractor responsible for deleting Trump’s account. His name is Bahtiyar Duysak and he said he never thought the President’s account would actually get suspended.
What happened is that on his last day of work, someone reported Trump’s account for violating Twitter rules. He flagged the account for deactivation, closed his computer, and left the office. The next day, some people were calling him a national hero.
No joke, the internet has nominated the Twitter employee who shut down Trump's account for a Nobel Peace Prize
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) November 6, 2017
“I didn’t hack anyone. I didn’t do anything that I was not authorized to do,” Duysak told Techcrunch from his hometown in Germany. “I didn’t go to any site I was not supposed to go to. I didn’t break any rules.”
“It was definitely a mistake…I really apologize if I hurt anyone. I didn’t do anything on purpose.”
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According to Techcrunch:
Duysak tells us that it started when he was approached by a woman whom he didn’t know very well. According to Duysak, the woman said that she had been contacted by someone asking about Duysak in connection with Trump’s Twitter account. After a moment of disbelief, he said he then looked at the news and realized what had happened.
As to why Duysak decided to go public with his identity: “I just want to continue an ordinary life. I don’t want to flee the media. I want to speak to my neighbors. I want to speak to my friends. I had to delete hundreds of friends because reporters are stalking me…I had to delete so many pictures.”
Watch the full interview below.
