Donald Trump promised a smooth transition of power during his inaugural address. However, the transfer from one Twitter account to another, which might, arguably, be more important to Trump, was anything but smooth.
In addition to waking up on Friday morning with the dreadful knowledge that Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States, some 560,000 Twitter users also found out later in the day that they had been automatically set to follow President Trump.
Understandably frustrated to have Trump’s inane tweets showing up on their screens, several people vented to Twitter about the change. Some users even hinted at some sort of conspiracy between Trump and the social media network.
Whoa. This was done to my account. That’s shady as fuck @Twitter @jack https://t.co/ndSW5ZnIdw
— Greg (@gwiss) January 21, 2017
WTF?! Did Trump just force a bunch of us to follow his account?! I never followed @POTUS here & this morning I wasn't either but now I am?! pic.twitter.com/8FppKG2zNP
— Linda Dianne (@Elle_Lo) January 21, 2017
https://twitter.com/McCarron/status/822610029522120705?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey posted an apology on Saturday, explaining how the issue had occurred and assuring disgruntled Twitter users that the problem had been corrected.
Dorsey explained that people who had followed President Obama’s new Twitter handle — @POTUS44 — had also been automatically set to follow Trump’s new @POTUS handle.
He added — although he didn’t explain how — that some people who had unfollowed @POTUS had been marked to follow the new @POTUS account. The problem also reportedly affected the @VP, @WhiteHouse, and @PressSec accounts.
Dorsey’s series of tweets explaining the situation can be seen below.
Two issues were reported during the day which we spent the night confirming and have now corrected:
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
1. People who followed @POTUS44 (Obama Admin) after 12pET were mistakenly set to also follow @POTUS (Trump Admin).
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
2. Some people who unfollowed @POTUS in the past were mistakenly marked to now follow @POTUS
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
We believe this affected about 560,000 people. This was a mistake, it wasn't right, we own it, and we apologize. No excuses.
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
This also affected other official Administration accounts like @VP, @WhiteHouse, and @PressSec.
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
We believe we've corrected all accounts to reflect your follow/unfollow intent. We're sorry for the mistakes made here, and thank you all.
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
Plenty of people are still unhappy about being automatically set to follow President Trump. However, Dorsey has been quick to respond to comments and questions from disgruntled Twitter users.
While the folks at Twitter have been hard at work trying to rectify Friday’s glitch, President Trump has been busy breaking in his new Twitter account.
At the time of this writing, Trump had posted seven tweets and gained 14.2 million followers. The majority of his tweets are thank you messages to his supporters. However, he also posted a slightly ominous tweet about his inauguration date.
January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again! https://t.co/n6aMK1MCRC pic.twitter.com/YVXQYqt9uR
— President Trump (@POTUS) January 21, 2017
There hasn’t been any bullying or ranting, yet, but the account is only a day old. Unless Trump decides to finally follow through on the promise he made when he was first elected — to use social media sparingly — the country’s newest president will surely give us much more to cringe at over the next four years.
Featured image via J. Scott Applewhite – Pool/Getty Images.
