Now, the identity of this masked online vigilante has finally been revealed, with TechCrunch running a piece today with German citizen Bahtiyar Duysak, the guy whose recent work and study visa in the U.S. ended in such spectacular fashion. Duysak’s brief suspension of Trump’s account doesn’t appear to have been spurred on by revolutionary zeal, though; working as a member of Twitter’s Trust And Safety team—the people tasked with figuring out which reports of abusive behavior are legitimate—he says a flag on Trump’s tweets came in just as he was finishing his last day at work. Assuming it wouldn’t actually go through—Twitter has supposedly protected Trump’s account from content flagging, citing newsworthiness as a reason to protect it from the company’s usual standards—he set the account to deactivate as a joke, turned off his computer, and walked away.
Duysak says the whole thing was a mistake; he assumed Twitter’s protections would stop the deactivation before it actually went into effect. He doesn’t seem especially regretful, though; the biggest hassle of the whole thing has been the media, apparently, which has been relentless in its drive to track this unsung hero down.
