aNewDomain –Four days after 50 plus federal agencies reacted to a Donald Trump gag order by launching “uncensored” alt and rogue Twitter accounts, the first casualties came in.
Early Sunday morning two of them — @AltUSNatParkSer and @AlternativeNWS (National Weather Service) — quietly tweeted that they no longer could continue their so-called “resistance” efforts.
The former deleted all tweets and unfollowed everyone on its follow list, with the exception of Donald Trump’s @potus account.
AltUSNatParkSer is one of more than 10 rogue Twitter accounts we’ve identified that share the standard “resist” message now common to most all of of them.
The EPA, USDA and NASA last week were gagged by the Trump administration. The EPA no longer is permitted to communicate with the American people, who it serves, nor comment on Trump’s killing off the 2015 Clean Water Rule, which protected the source of the drinking water for more than 115 million Americans.
The National Park Service allied rogue accounts, in particular, were among the very first alt and rogue Twitter accounts to appear late last week. One of them was the first to go.
The AlternativeNWS, a Twitter account purportedly formed out of the US National Weather Service, is gone entirely.
Click here for our running Twitter list of alt and rogue U.S. agency Twitter accounts.
At about 7:30 a.m.ET Sunday, the alternative US National Park Service twitter account, which started the rogue US public agency trend four days ago, tweeted: “Going to have to shut this down, ‘Some people’ aren’t happy with the account. Sorry loyal followers.”
More than 35,500 Twitter users have followed the account since it launched late last week.
A couple hours later, that tweet was deleted along with all 200 plus tweets from the account. The account holder also unfollowed the 300 accounts it was following (except Donald Trump’s @potus accounts).
Another Twitter account with a similar handle posted this tweet on the news: An appeal for Americans to petition their lawmakers not to confirm Donald Trump’s choice for EPA chief, Oklahoma’s Scott Pruitt.
The ALT U.S. National Park Service Account was celebrated widely on Twitter after it launched last Thursday. An anonymous Twitter artist provided it with a “rogue logo” within a few hours of its request to do so.
Thousands of Twitter uses have voiced their support for the National Park Service and other public agencies or public agency-aligned sites.
Here is a list of alt and rogue US agency site’s I compiled via my own Twitter account, as well as those of its most prominent supporters.
Here’s the question: How long before the alt Twitter accounts attached to the Departments of Defense, Justice and Education, just for starters, are similarly pressured to close?
Here is a retweet from the AltUSNatParkSer account from Friday.
The AlternativeNWS site was trending in some areas of the nation on Friday.
For aNewDomain, I’m Gina Smith.
