Twitter Accidentally Made 560,000 People Follow Donald Trump's @POTUS Account

Not cool, Twitter.

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It seems a complicated matter to transfer the Twitter archive of a departed president to another account and usher in the new president as the original handle's owner. (It's complicated just typing that in a way that makes sense.) When a president leaves office, all his tweets are migrated from the official @POTUS account to a new numbered handle—in Obama's case, @POTUS44—before his replacement takes over as admin. Along with the log of tweets, the followers are migrated to the new account as well.

Apparently, Twitter stumbled in the transition process this time around. Many users were made to automatically follow the @POTUS account, now owned by Donald Trump, along with other White House admin accounts, even though they had intentionally unfollowed them before Trump's inauguration. As you can imagine, this caused of bit of an upset among users who strongly dislike our new president and his Twitter habits and had no desire for his tweets to show up in their feed.

The error reportedly about 560,000 users, which was quickly brought to Twitter's attention as people began sounding off complaints.

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Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, tweeted out an explanation and apology to users experiencing the issue. "This was a mistake, it wasn't right, we own it, and we apologize. No excuses," he wrote.

His statement, delivered in a series of tweets, was as follows:

The Obama Administration worked with all their platforms to craft a transition plan. Because @POTUS is an institutional account (not personal) they felt it only fair to transition accounts with followers intact, but 0 tweets. We kicked off that plan at 12p Eastern yesterday. If you were following @POTUS before 12pET, by end of day you'd be following *two* accounts: @POTUS44 (44th Admin) and @POTUS (45th Admin). Two issues were reported during the day which we spent the night confirming and have now corrected: 1. People who followed @POTUS44 (Obama Admin) after 12pET were mistakenly set to also follow @POTUS (Trump Admin). 2. Some people who unfollowed @POTUS in the past were mistakenly marked to now follow @POTUS We believe this affected about 560,000 people. This was a mistake, it wasn't right, we own it, and we apologize. No excuses.

The glitch is said to have been resolved at this point, but you might want to check your Twitter account, just in case…

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Sarah Lindig
Sarah Lindig
Editor

I am an experienced editor, writer, and creative strategist, specializing in fashion, beauty, and lifestyle content for digital media outlets, as well as video and social platforms. While I currently operate as a freelance contributor/consultant, with such clients as The Zoe Report, my 10+-year background in the industry was cultivated at the dot-coms of elite publications, including Harper’s BAZAAR, ELLE, and Marie Claire.