Twitter had a bit of an embarrassment last Tuesday when it accidentally suspended the account of its own CEO, Jack Dorsey. The fiasco prompted speculation that the Twitter CEO might have gotten his account hacked or shut down due to a high number of complaints from other users.
After it came back online, Dorsey tweeted that the suspension was the result of an internal mistake. It provoked several angry replies from people who asked about how many of its users' accounts have been accidentally suspended in the past. Twitter didn't respond to requests for further comments but later assured users everything was back to normal, according to CNN.
The Twitter CEO, whose account uses the handle @jack, took awhile to fully get back to normal. After it was reinstated, the follower figure showed 145 followers instead of the usual 3.9 million. Later in the day, it got back to 3.8 million.
The glitch followed Twitter's suspension of the accounts of several prominent "alt-right" movement's members. Which users' account Twitter suspends has been a highly sensitive topic as it struggled to find a balance between allowing free speech and protecting other users from harassment.
The alt-right, short for "alternative movement" has been around for years, but following Donald Trump's victory, its presence has widened. Just last weekend, prominent member Richard Spencer was seen addressing a conference in Washington, D.C. where the crowd was caught on video raising their hands in Nazi salute after he hailed president-elect Donald Trump, USA Today reported.
Twitter had suspended several alt-right members' accounts following complaints of racism and harassing tweets. This is not the first time it happened. Following famous actor Robin Williams' death in Aug. 2014, his daughter Zelda was forced to delete her Twitter account after members trolled her with abusive messages, prompting Twitter to suspend several members' accounts then also.
While Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's accidental suspension of his account may be unintentional, some supporters of alt-right actually cheered the incident with celebratory tweets.
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