For 11 minutes on Nov. 2, there truly was peace on Earth.
Then President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was reactivated.
Twitter blamed the deletion of The Donald’s account on a rogue employee during his last day on the job.
Now the man responsible for temporarily making it impossible for Trump to tweet is revealing his identity and explaining his actions in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch.
His name is Bahtiyar Duysak, and he is a German citizen with Turkish roots who was doing customer support for Twitter’s Trust and Safety division while in the U.S. on a work and study visa. Part of his responsibility was to deal with alerts reporting bad behavior, offensive or illegal tweets, and other forms of harassment.
During his last shift, someone reported Trump’s account and, without thinking, Duysak put the wheels in motion to deactivate it. Several hours later, he realized he had made a “mistake,” especially after seeing several news stories about it.
Duysak said he never thought Trump’s account would actually get deactivated, mainly because of a Twitter policy that protects tweets that are considered newsworthy even if they might violate its terms of service.
Duysak, who is back in Germany, tried to lie low for a while but decided to reveal himself in order to clear the air.
“I want to continue an ordinary life. I don’t want to flee from the media,” he told TechCrunch. “I didn’t do any crime or anything evil, but I feel like Pablo Escobar, and slowly it’s getting really annoying.”
Duysak said he’s not interested in a career in tech and is more likely to consider a job in finance.
He’s quick to add: “But I love Twitter, and I love America.”
Related
Before You Go
