Meet the man who deactivated Donald Trump's Twitter account

The “rogue Twitter employee” who shut down the US president’s account for 11 minutes has revealed himself

Published: Thursday, 30 November 2017 at 11:15 am

The Twitter employee who was hailed a hero for deactivating Donald Trump’s account for 11 blissful minutes on 2nd November has revealed himself.

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Bahtiyar Duysak, a German citizen of Turkish descent worked for Twitter as a contractor and was the man responsible for deactivating the account on his final day at work.

Trump’s personal @realDonaldTrump account has 43.6 million followers, and is often used by the president to air his grievances against Hollywood, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and the national press.

Cryptically, Duysak has called the move “a mistake” and told TechCrunch that the “random” deactivation was due to a series of unspecified “coincidences” that had occurred on his final day.

“I had a wild time in America,” Duysak said. “I was tired sometimes. And everyone can do mistakes. I did a mistake.”

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Trump’s Twitter account made the headlines again on Wednesday when he controversially retweeted inflammatory anti-Muslim videos from the British far-right group Britain First.

Many of Duysak’s fans said that he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for deactivating Trump’s account earlier this month, and they were probably wishing he still worked at Twitter yesterday. Alas, he is being very humble about the whole affair.

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“I don’t deserve to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Duysak said. “I just want to continue an ordinary life.”

Authors

Ellie HarrisonWriter, RadioTimes.com

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