A German man has come forward as the former Twitter Inc
employee who shut down the account of U.S. President Donald Trump for 11
minutes this month on his last day of work at the social network.
The technology news website TechCrunch published an
interview on Wednesday with Bahtiyar Duysak, whom it called a 20-something with
Turkish roots who was born and raised in Germany.
The website said he was a temporary contract worker in San
Francisco for Twitter. Duysak, who had not previously been identified as the
person behind the takedown, told TechCrunch that he considered Trump’s
temporary silencing a “mistake” and never thought the account would get
deactivated. He said it was not a planned act. Rather, he said, the chance to
shutter the account fell into his lap near the end of his scheduled final
shift, and he decided to take it. “There are millions of people who would take
actions against him if they had the possibility.
“In my case, it was
just random,” Duysak said in a video of the interview posted online. He wore a
gray sweater emblazoned with the American flag.
Twitter on Wednesday would not confirm whether Duysak was the
ex-employee in question or answer other questions. Reuters could not immediately
reach Duysak. BuzzFeed News, citing two anonymous sources, reported separately
that Duysak was the ex-employee responsible. Duysak is a former volunteer
security guard at a Muslim community center in California, BuzzFeed reported.
Trump has been
critical of Muslims, calling during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign for a
“total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. The
takedown of Trump’s account on Nov. 2 sparked concerns among Twitter users over
how much power employees have over sensitive accounts and whether abuse of
their power could lead to international incidents. Twitter said in a statement
on Wednesday: “We have taken a number of steps to keep an incident like this
from happening again.”
He said Duysak did
not shed much light on the incident. Near the end of his last day at the San
Francisco-based company, an alert came to him that someone had reported Trump’s
account for an unspecified violation. Duysak
put the wheels in motion to deactivate it, TechCrunch said, although the
account did not go offline until hours later. Neither Duysak nor TechCrunch
explained the delay. “I didn’t hack anyone. I didn’t do anything which I wasn’t
authorised to do,” he said.
Reuters/NAN
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