Techcrunch conducted an interview with the man who allegedly deactivated president Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
Bahtiyar Duysak was fired from Twitter after deactivating the president’s beloved Twitter account in an incident that made worldwide news.
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We were among those looking for the contractor, and through a string of events found out his name, Bahtiyar Duysak, and got him to agree to talk to us in a town in Germany.
Duysak, a twenty-something with Turkish roots who was born and raised in Germany, was working as a contractor for a fixed term for the last part of his stay in the U.S. under a work and study visa. In addition to his role at Twitter with Pro Unlimited, other assignments had included stints in monetization at Google and YouTube via another contractor, Vaco.
Many have wondered on Twitter why Trump’s account has never been shut down for violating Twitter’s terms (among the reasons people have given is that he has threatened North Korea with nuclear violence) while others have been calling for people to report him using Twitter’s reporting tools for offensive tweets.
At Twitter, Duysak had been assigned to customer support as part of the Trust and Safety division. This team receives alerts when users report bad behavior, including offensive or illegal tweets, harassment, someone impersonating another person, and so on. The team performs triage on complaints to determine what further steps, if any, should be taken.
Duysak describes the event as a “mistake.” Specifically, he told us, he never thought the account would actually get deactivated.