Twitter CEO banned from Twitter

CEO of Twitter and Square Jack Dorsey accepts the award for CEO of the Year onstage during the Thurgood Marshall College Fund 28th Annual Awards. Photo / Getty

Social media doesn't get much more awkward than this.

Twitter suspended the account of its co-founder and chief executive officer today, with users shown only error messages when trying to view Jack Dorsey's @jack profile.

The embarrassing mix-up comes just a fortnight after Facebook appeared to pronounce its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, dead in another "terrible error".

Mr Dorsey's suspension from the site follows a recent Twitter crackdown on offensive tweets.

His profile was removed earlier today and later reinstated with fewer fans, before his 3.6 million followers returned.

Mr Dorsey explained in a tweet that his account had been suspended in "an internal mistake".

It's not known whether @jack's account was removed as part of a wider clean-up of the social network, but Twitter has recently suspended the accounts of several users from the "alt-right" movement.

Self-described "alt-Reich queen" Tila Tequila was banned from the site yesterday after posting a photo performing the Hitler salute at a US white nationalist event.

Twitter is not the only social media outlet to experience problems from within, however.

Just two weeks ago, Facebook accidentally pronounced two million of its users were dead, posting a remembrance message to the accounts and asking visitors to "remember and celebrate" their lives.

One of accounts affected was that of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook issued a statement calling the issue "a terrible error that we have now fixed".