Twitter suspends CEO Jack Dorsey's account

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In an embarrassing gaffe, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was suspended from his own platform last night, prompting some jibes from lesser known Twitter users.

The suspension lasted around 10 minutes, and Dorsey tweeted after his account was restored to explain that the incident was "an internal mistake".

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As a consequence of the ban, Dorsey's follower count took a steep dive, plummeting from almost four million down to virtually none. Twitter's wittier users were quick to revel in the CEO's suspension, with an avalanche of jokes at Dorsey's expense.

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Although his follower count quickly started approaching its previous levels, the Twitter co-founder hasn't quite regained his full status. At time of writing, Dorsey had less than 2.7 million followers, more than 1.2 million fewer than he did before.

The unexpected suspension follows a month in which social media has been under intense scrutiny. President-elect Donald Trump used Twitter heavily during his presidential campaign, and the platform was forced to crack down on hate speech last week, suspending swathes of hate speech activists.

Similarly, Facebook has been in the news over accusations that fake and misleading news that was spread over Facebook contributed to Trump's surprise win. Facebook and Google have both promised to do more to fight this phenomenon, with Zuckerberg promising better anti-spam algorithmsto weed out false news.

Adam Shepherd

Adam Shepherd has been a technology journalist since 2015, covering everything from cloud storage and security, to smartphones and servers. Over the course of his career, he’s seen the spread of 5G, the growing ubiquity of wireless devices, and the start of the connected revolution. He’s also been to more trade shows and technology conferences than he cares to count.

Adam is an avid follower of the latest hardware innovations, and he is never happier than when tinkering with complex network configurations, or exploring a new Linux distro. He was also previously a co-host on the ITPro Podcast, where he was often found ranting about his love of strange gadgets, his disdain for Windows Mobile, and everything in between.

You can find Adam tweeting about enterprise technology (or more often bad jokes) @AdamShepherUK.