Kathy Dunderdale's Twitter account is now history after it was discovered that the Newfoundland and Labrador Premier had been following a porn account that served up X-rated videos. The deletion of @kathydunderdale came on Wednesday night, though it'd been more than a year since Dunderdale last posted on Twitter — an intentional leave according to the politician.

"I have not used my Twitter account for over a year very purposefully — I have decided to disengage from Twitter," she said Thursday. "Is there some requirement that I have to read every letter, read every email, have a Twitter account, be engaged in Facebook? I have all kinds of opportunity to hear from the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, and I have the freedom to choose which one of those, or how many of those tools, that I'm going to use."

Nonetheless, until this week the account remained visible, but the porn link seemed to be the last straw for Dunderdale. "When I found that somebody had attached disturbing material to my account, I disassociated myself with it immediately and took it down immediately."

The humbling lessons of social media

The snafu is doubly embarrassing since Dunderdale has been waging something of a public feud with New Democrat Gerry Rogers. Finding that Rogers, a Member of House Assembly, was part of a Facebook group responsible for posting threats toward the N.L. Premier, her political opponents sought a bit of retribution by having Rogers ejected from the assembly Tuesday. Rogers maintains she was added to the Facebook group "Dunderdale Must Go!" unknowingly.

"As an MHA, when you're on Facebook, when you're engaged in Twitter, then you have to have an obligation to pay attention," Dunderdale would say on Tuesday. If it wasn't clear before, Dunderdale now understands that such caution should be exhibited by everyone up the chain.