‘Heroic’ outgoing Twitter employee deletes Trump’s account

twitter stock donald trump

On their last day at the company, a Twitter employee removed US President Donald Trump’s infamous account from the platform.

Twitter first blamed “human error” as the cause; it later clarified the removal was purposeful.

The account was down for 11 minutes before it was restored with all of its tweets, but that didn’t stop others on the platform from declaring the unnamed employee the “Greatest Living Person”.

Of course, there were those who found the removal to be a violation of free speech, despite Twitter being a private platform that reserves the right to remove or suspend any account.

Over the past few months, Donald Trump’s presence on Twitter has been hotly contested. Many believe that his aggressive and seemingly impulsive tweets threaten violence and encourage harassment — both of which are against the platform’s policies.

Twitter, however, has doubled down on its stance that having Trump on the platform is newsworthy and in the public interest. The company has not yet made clear how it will deal with the incident, saying only that it is “conducting an internal review”.

But while Twitter may be taking the employee’s actions seriously, others have taken a more lighthearted approach.

Some joked that Trump left the platform deliberately — either because he made the emotional move over to his “personal” Twitter account, or, as Ira Madison III jokingly suggests, it all comes back to First Lady Melania Trump’s body double.

And, of course, there was that obligatory “you’re fired joke”.

More

News

Sign up to our newsletter to get the latest in digital insights. sign up

Welcome to Memeburn

Sign up to our newsletter to get the latest in digital insights.