Pro-Tip: If your job is to run the official Twitter feed for the American Embassy in Egypt, it’s probably not a good idea to frantically delete your entire profile because one of your tweets linking to a Daily Show segment was criticized.
A few days ago, we posted a story about Egyptian comedy show host Bassem Youssef who was arrested for criticizing religious hardliners and President Mohamed Morsi. Well when the official Twitter feed of the American embassy in Egypt posted a link to Daily Show host Jon Stewart railing against the Egyptian government for their restrictions on free speech, Egyptian officials weren’t very pleased. When they released their own statement critical of the tweet, the social media department at the embassy did the only rational thing when faced with criticism about exposing an injustice and an attack on free speech rights: They deleted their whole Twitter account, then decided to put it back up, without the offending Tweet. Evidently, officials in Washington were not too happy about the whole episode …
