Yahoo News Twitter apologizes for mistakes around @POTUS account
There was a mistake made on Inauguration Day.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized Saturday for accidentally making it so that Twitter users followed @POTUS and other administrative accounts even when they tried not to.
It was a complex ordeal during which Twitter told Mashable on Friday, following reports of users saying that they were automatically following @POTUS under Trump even when they were not before or had unfollowed prior to Inauguration (as Twitter outlined they could do), that there was no glitch.
SEE ALSO: Will Melania Trump take over FLOTUS twitter? No one really knows.
That is still true, in part. But Twitter engineers orchestrated settings that violated what they had said to do.
Dorsey explained the situation in a series of tweets Saturday, which are all below. TLDR: If you followed @POTUS44 (Obama's archived tweets) after 12 p.m. ET Friday you were automatically set to follow @POTUS (Trump), and some accounts were mistakenly marked in the system to follow @POTUS despite previously unfollowing the account.
Here's Dorsey's full explanation, from Twitter:
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
The Obama Administration worked with all their platforms to craft a transition plan: https://t.co/cyMrananrg
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
Because @POTUS is an institutional account (not personal) they felt it only fair to transition accounts with followers intact, but 0 tweets.
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
We kicked off that plan at 12p Eastern yesterday: https://t.co/z9DVkI2xAv
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
If you were following @POTUS before 12pET, by end of day you'd be following *two* accounts: @POTUS44 (44th Admin) and @POTUS (45th Admin)
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
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
As of Saturday, President Trump (@POTUS) has 14.2 million Twitter followers, and @POTUS44 (Obama's archive) has 14.3 million.
