(CNN) — After the National Park Service retweeted a few messages that negatively compared the crowd sizes at Obama’s 2009 inauguration to Donald Trump’s inauguration, representatives from the new administration asked the Interior Department’s digital team to temporarily stop using Twitter, according to a message obtained by CNN.
The National Park Service Twitter account retweeted this observation from New York Times reporter Binyamin Appelbaum on Friday: “Compare the crowds: 2009 inauguration at left, 2017 inauguration at right.” The tweet contained images from both events showing an apparent difference in crowd size. The retweet has since been deleted.
After the retweet began to get attention, a career staffer at the Interior Department instructed employees that the “new administration has said that the department and all bureau are not supposed to tweet this weekend and wait for guidance until Monday.”
The message continued, “Please make sure that any scheduled tweets are no longer scheduled.”
The message referred all questions to another career staffer at the department.
On Saturday, the National Park Service called Friday’s retweets “mistaken.”
“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,” the account tweeted.
Gizmodo first reported the direction from the administration to stop tweeting.
The order to stop tweeting impacted all accounts under the Interior Department’s purview, including individual National Park accounts that are, at times, used to communicate emergency messages to visitors.
“Until further notice, all park road condition updates will provided on the Mount Rainier Facebook page,” Mount Rainier National Park tweeted on Friday.
