NSA whistleblower and US exile Edward Snowden recently joined Twitter – his first act as a new member was to establish himself as the greatest troll of the 21st Century – and within three days he has already accrued a whopping 1.26 million followers, and a very warm welcome from the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson, WikiLeaks, and Anonymous. His first message – “Can you hear me now?” – was, at the time of writing, retweeted 119,761 times and favourited 114,661 times.
Impressive work, and Snowden was sure to have been basking in his instant Twitter popularity… had he not neglected to stop e-mail notifications.
I forgot to turn off notifications. Twitter sent me an email for each:
Follow
Favorite
Retweet
DM47 gigs of notifications. #lessonlearned
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 1, 2015
For every follow, favourite, and retweet, Snowden received an e-mail – and the guy even accepts direct messages from everyone, so imagine how many people have tried to contact him privately – likely close to 2 million’s worth, filling up his inbox to the tune of 47GB.
Snowden, a former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor has been exiled to Russia since 2013, when he leaked classified information revealing the scope of the NSA’s mass surveillance program. He is now director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit organisation which aims to protect the rights of journalists.
