A German man has come forward as the former Twitter employee who shut down the account of US President Donald Trump for 11 minutes this month on his last day of work at the social network.
The technology news website TechCrunch has published an interview with Bahtiyar Duysak, whom it called a 20-something with Turkish roots who was born and raised in Germany. He was a temporary contract worker in San Francisco for Twitter, the website said.
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.
It was not a planned act, he said. 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.
Duysak said 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.
He put the wheels in motion to deactivate it, TechCrunch said, although the account did not go offline until hours later.
"I didn't hack anyone. I didn't do anything which I wasn't authorised to do," he said.
Donald Trump's Twitter account was down for 11 minutes. Source: TechCrunch/YouTube
