Twitter says it's investigating an issue with the transition from former President Barack Obama to President Donald Trump on the official @POTUS account, after users complained they were mistakenly added as followers.
The plan is part of a broader digital transition connected to the White House's social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. For Twitter, Trump assumes the POTUS handle, while Obama shifts to a new handle, @POTUS44. The POTUS account would start over at zero tweets, but include all its followers, which sat around 13 million before the transition was formally completed. POTUS44 would serve as an archive of tweets during the Obama administration.
Issues with the shift surfaced when Twitter users complained they were following POTUS despite never having followed before or unfollowing ahead of the transition.
According to tweets from Twitter support and CEO Jack Dorsey, the process is part of a migration of followers to the new POTUS account.
In a series of tweets published Saturday, Dorsey says the transition was scheduled to take effect at noon ET. Users who followed the POTUS account before noon would be set to follow both POTUS and POTUS44.
However, Dorsey says some users who followed POTUS44 after noon were mistakenly set to also follow POTUS. Also, some people who unfollowed POTUS prior to the change were incorrectly added again as followers.
"We believe this affected about 560,000 people," said Dorsey. "This was a mistake, it wasn't right, we own it, and we apologize. No excuses." Dorsey says the issues have been fixed.
The new POTUS Twitter account has 14.2 million followers as of Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, Trump's personal account, which he continues to use regularly, boasts more than 21 million followers.
[Brett Molina/USATODAY]
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