MANILA, Philippines – If you've been wondering about the identity of the former Twitter employee who "inadvertently" deactivated the account of US President Donald Trump, wonder no more.
The former employee, Bahtiyar Duysak, called the deactivation a mistake in an interview with TechCrunch, and that he never thought Trump's account would be deactivated.
In the interview, Duysak – who was working as a contractor with Twitter's Trust and Safety Division during his US stay under a work and study visa – explained during his last hour on the job that he set in motion the deactivation, as his job entailed.
Duysak got alerts when users of the service report offensive or illegal tweets, harassment, impersonations, or other sorts of bad behavior. His job as part of the team is to figure out if further steps should be taken on a given report.
After acting upon the report, he set into motion the events that would begin the 11-minute deactivation of Trump's account. Trump's newsworthiness should have protected the account from deactivation, as per Twitter's policies, but it did not occur in this case.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Among the considerations is "newsworthiness" and whether a Tweet is of public interest 3/6</p>— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) <a href="https://twitter.com/Policy/status/912438362010783744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 25, 2017</a></blockquote>
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The interview did not explain the process for acting on reports or deactivating accounts.
While he doesn't appear to be in legal trouble, his situation is complicated by the fact that he's of Turkish origin and is not from the US – facts which could be spun in a certain way.
Duysak admits that the media has been more dogged in their pursuit of him relative to any law enforcement. “I want to continue an ordinary life. I don’t want to flee from the media," Duysak said.
He added, “I want to speak to my neighbors and friends. I had to delete hundreds of friends, so many pictures, because reporters are stalking me. I just want to continue an ordinary life." – Rappler.com