Twitter sorry 560,000 made to follow Trump
Glitch occurs during the transfer of the @POTUS account from Barack Obama to his successor
Twitter apologized Saturday after several hundred thousand people suddenly discovered that they were now following US President Donald Trump on the social media platform.
The glitch occurred during the transfer of the @POTUS account from former president Barack Obama to Trump. While most of Obama’s followers were transferred to his new account, some 560,000 people were left following the new president.
Not everyone was happy about that.
“While it is ok for @POTUS account to move to @POTUS44 and/or @BarackObama it’s unacceptable for @Twitter to make me follow #Trump,” wrote one user.
I woke up this morning and realized that I'm suddenly following Donald Trump on twitter? These @POTUS tweets aren't worth reading. Blocked
— CantWhipARabbit (@CantWhipARabbit) January 22, 2017
“The account should have been at zero followers when Trump took it over. The 13 million on there followed Obama, not Trump,” said another.
Twitter has been one of the main tools used by Trump to get out his messages during the campaign.
Twitter chief Jack Dorsey apologized for the mistake and said it had been fixed.
“Because @POTUS is an institutional account (not personal) (The Obama team) felt it only fair to transition accounts with followers intact, but 0 tweets,” Dorsey wrote. “If you were following @POTUS before 12pET, by end of day you’d be following *two* accounts: @POTUS44 (44th Admin) and @POTUS (45th Admin)”
All: we investigated what happened here, and we made some mistakes (which have been corrected). Some context first. https://t.co/W1n3Xs6LaN
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
However, he said two problems had cropped up.
“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,” Dorsey said.
“We believe this affected about 560,000 people. This was a mistake, it wasn’t right, we own it, and we apologize. No excuses,” he tweeted.
The Times of Israel Community.