Members of the elite Content Curation Program (CCP) at Twitter were in a mad panic earlier today when they accidentally banned themselves. The team locked themselves out of the system and were unable to get back in for three full hours.

Biting News got in touch with Twitter’s Head of Thought Control, Eric A Blair, and asked what happened.

“Members of the CCP work tirelessly to suppress free speech. We were in Room 101 at the Orwell Correction Facility in San Francisco when one of us (I’m looking at you Nigel) accidentally locked the entire team out of their moderator accounts.”

“We were busy stomping all over the First Amendment when one of the team mistook Twitter’s terms of service (TOS) for the NAZI Party’s 1933 manifesto. It’s an easy mistake to make because the content is almost identical.”

“Unfortunately, every single member of the CCP quotes the TOS on a regular basis. As our British colleagues like to say, we’re a bunch of tossers. Anyway, Nigel identified every account that quotes the offending speech and blocked it. And suddenly, none of us could access the moderator tools!”

The lack of CCP control over Twitter opened a brief window in which normal Americans were able to express themselves unmolested. The resulting outbreak of intelligent discussion left an indelible impression on Twitter’s CCP staff.

“We’ve all had counselling for post Dramatic stress disorder” claimed Blair. “I’m not sure any of us will ever truly recover.”