Take that, Donald Trump: unofficial National Park Service Twitter account gains a million fans

| 9:16 pm EST January 25, 2017
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Yesterday we brought you the story of how the National Park Service launched an unofficial Twitter account in defiance of Donald Trump’s attempted censorship and harassment. Suffice it to say that things went quite well for the National Park Service and rather poorly for Trump’s effort at taking away its voice.


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Here’s what we reported yesterday:

Trump doesn’t have the ability to shut down a Twitter account, or to suspend it from being usable; only Twitter the company would be able to do that. Instead he’s been sabotaging the National Park Service Twitter accounts by presumably threatening to fire people if they dare to tweet things he doesn’t like, or if they tweet during times when he’s put them in the penalty box. But he can only do that if he knows who’s tweeting.

When it comes to official Park Service accounts like @NatlParkService or @BadlandsNPS, specific employees have access to those accounts, so it’s easy for Trump to know who’s posting any tweets he doesn’t like — and whom to punish. So instead, Park Service employees whose identities are unknown have created an unofficial Twitter account at @AltNatParkSer.

Now, just thirty-six hours into its existence, the unofficial NNational Park Service account has gained a million followers on Twitter. That gives it more than twice as many followers as the official National Park Service Twitter account — the one which Donald Trump temporarily suspended NPS employees from using, and has since banned climate change data from.

The operators of the rogue National Park Service account on Twitter continue to not only post climate change data, but also to taunt Donald Trump in the process, posting “Can’t wait for President Trump to call us FAKE NEWS. You can take our official twitter, but you’ll never take our free time!” You can follow the unofficial National Park Service Twitter account here.