On Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the President of the United States of America. At the time, it was noted that the crowd at his inauguration was smaller than the crowd at Barack Obama's inauguration.
@Interior, the official Twitter account of the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) posted two photos comparing the crowds at the two inaugurations side by side; Obama's was indeed notably bigger. The Twitter account was shut down, and the Tweet removed. The Washington Post reported that an email had been sent out to all DOI employees, directing "All bureaus and the department have been directed by incoming administration to shut down Twitter platforms immediately until further notice".
On Saturday, January 21 the Twitter account was back up and Tweeting as if nothing had happened. A related account, @NatlParkService was also back up, but did acknowledge that they had retweeted the offending picture, and apologized for it.
"We regret the mistaken RTs from our account yesterday and look forward to continuing to share the beauty and history of our parks with you."
There was a bit of a kerfuffle over this, with many tweets supporting the National Park Service in reporting the truth. On Tuesday, January 24, the Badlands National Park Twitter account posted four tweets on anthropogenic climate change; they were removed a few hours later, with the statement from a park representative that the tweets were "posted by a former employee who was not currently authorized to use the park's account... The park was not told to remove the tweets but chose to do so when they realized that their account had been compromised."
That same day, @AltNatParkSer became active -- an alternate Twitter account that had existed for a few years, but had not been doing much. It purported to be "run by several active NPS rangers and friends," and occupied itself with posting 'real facts' rather than alternative facts, including the original inauguration crowd pictures and statements about global warming. It quickly gained over a million followers, and was up to about 1.2 million when it suddenly changed.
Thursday January 26, the account's name changed to @NotAltWorld (another pre-existing Twitter account), and a series of tweets were sent out, announcing:
"We have decided to pass over control of this account to individuals outside of government employment for the sake of our colleagues. / The past few days have proven the immense belief & support this country has in our national parks, environment and scientific departments. / But we cannot escape the pressure that the popularity of this account has brought on our colleagues. It's selfish to continue ourselves. / they haven't won & we haven't lost., & you have proven that this country believes in the serious work undertaken by our scientists. / As such, we are handing control of this account over to several activists & journalists who believe they can continue in the same spirit."
This didn't last long either. On Saturday January 28 @NotAltWorld announced that they were handing "the mantle of promoting the ALT National Park Service's work over to @ALTUSNPS. They are to raise funds for @NatlParkService". @NotAltWorld still exists, but has refocused more generally on politics rather than science. They have 1.3 million followers at the time of this writing. @ALTUSNPS, a brand-new account created just to replace @NatlParkService has 14,900 followers, but is growing fast.
And someone, lord only knows who, has restarted @NatlParkService. It is advocating for political action against Trump, and not limiting itself to issues of science and DOI management. It has 36,900 followers right at the moment, but it is growing fast, and will probably be well over 40,000 before you read this.
There are a number of less confusing 'rebellion accounts' on Twitter. Aside from @AltNatParkSer, @NotAltWorld, and @ALTUSNPS there are accounts for @RogueNASA, @rogue_NOAA and altUSEPA, among dozens of others.
Update: there are now literally dozens of rebellion accounts, with more being created daily. Here is one list that attempts to collect them: Twistance Members.