Believe it or not, but it’s only been about a month since President Donald Trump’s Twitter account disappeared for several minutes. The disappearance was attributed to a “human error by a Twitter employee” on the employee’s last day at the company. Now, said employee has come forward to speak about his brief claim to fame. CNN reports that Bahtiyar Duysak was working as a contractor at Twitter when he accidentally took down the president’s infamous account.
“I did a mistake, I confess,” the 28-year-old German native said to CNNTech. “It’s not like I was looking for something or planning to do it. It was in front of me, and I didn’t do a good job, and I didn’t double-check things.”
Bahtiyar Duysak on deleting Trump’s Twitter account: “In my opinion, it was definitely a mistake…If I’m involved in this, I really apologize if I hurt anyone. I didn’t do anything on purpose” https://t.co/5v5VwKNVPY
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) November 30, 2017
While I’m sure many people were hoping that Duysak removed the account as an act of protest against Trump, he insisted that he’s actually an admirer of Trump’s path to success. “He is a very successful person, and I admire his hard work and how he made it to get the highest position,” Duysak said. “But I think he needs to learn a little as a politician.”
Working through the contracting company Pro Unlimited, Duysak began focusing on Trump’s account when it was reported by another user. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Duysak went about the process of punishing a reported account assuming that Trump’s account would not actually be affected. While he didn’t share the specifics of how he took down the account, Duysak allegedly didn’t realize the error he had committed until news outlets began reporting the account’s absence. He grew nervous because he knew he was the only employee who “left on the last day.”
“Even if it was on purpose, it still shouldn’t have taken place…because of internal regulations at the company,” Duysak said of the page’s disappearance. “But all of this, it’s not my responsibility.”
Calling the day of the deletion “one of those days,” Duysak, who shared his story in a video interview with TechCrunch, has now returned to living in Germany. He requested to leave his company because he didn’t want to extend his work visa, and his absence has left behind the question of how much power regular Twitter employees have over prominent user accounts.
“We have taken a number of steps to keep an incident like this from happening again,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
Well, this definitely wasn’t the rebellious act many hoped it would be.