The news that Donald Trump’s Twitter account had been briefly deactivated received huge attention worldwide – with many offering rewards to the company employee who took it down.
The US president’s personal account, @RealDonaldTrump, was deactivated shortly before 11pm UK time and restored 11 minutes later.
Twitter took responsibility for the outage, saying the action had been taken by a customer support employee on their last day at the company.
With over 40 million followers, Trump has sent more than 36,000 tweets on his personal account – so even for 11 minutes, his absence was widely noted.
So Donald Trump’s twitter account was shut down. Those 11 minutes was like when Andy played the opera on the Shawshank PA system… pic.twitter.com/2S9Y1TiqWr
— Roger Sterling 🍸 (@NYRogerSterling) November 3, 2017
While Twitter announced it was “taking steps to prevent this from happening again”, not everybody agreed that was the correct course of action.
No error, that was the right move
— Graham McGrath (@InstaGraham09) November 3, 2017
We’ll all remember where we were during the 10 minutes of peace while Donald Trump’s Twitter account was down.
— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) November 2, 2017
Twitter’s announcement that the deactivation of the account was the work of an employee also prompted a strong response.
Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu wanted to reward them with a pizza.
Dear Twitter employee who shut down Trump's Twitter: You made America feel better for 11 minutes. DM me & I will buy you a Pizza Hut pizza. https://t.co/ruzaVBcQp1
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) November 3, 2017
But David Jolly, a former Republican congressman, felt a bigger reward was in order.
Just gonna say it, the employee at Twitter who shut off Trump's account for 11 mins could become a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
— David Jolly (@DavidJollyFL) November 3, 2017
Give them a bonus!!!!!
— patrick (@sashapadme) November 3, 2017
Employee of the Decade.
— Christopher Laudando (@Chris_Laudando) November 3, 2017
Someone out there is about to put "deleted Donald Trump's twitter account" on their resume…
— Krysti Wilkinson (@krystiwithakay) November 3, 2017
I think a statue would be appropriate
— Ted jones (@ohboy51) November 3, 2017
Not everyone was impressed, however – some wanted to know how a customer support employee had the power to delete the president’s personal account.
Why does a Twitter customer support employee have enough access to delete the President of the United States account? WTF
— Katica (@GOPPollAnalyst) November 3, 2017
Meanwhile, this social media user expressed the hope that other employees at Twitter wouldn’t suffer as a result of the deactivation.
I️ hope that the lives of the existing Twitter employees don’t become harder as the result of the one person deactivating Trump’s account.
— deray (@deray) November 3, 2017
Trump’s account was down for just 11 minutes, but he was soon back at the keyboard to let everybody know he would be appearing on Fox.
I will be interviewed by @IngrahamAngle on @FoxNews at 10:00. Enjoy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
It looks like normal service has been resumed.