People Are Saying That Twitter Forced Them To Follow Trump's @POTUS Account

So much for the peaceful transition of social media power.

As soon as President Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president, he got a new Twitter handle: @POTUS. Meanwhile, Barack Obama's presidential tweets and followers followed him over to @POTUS44.

On behalf of my entire family, THANK YOU! #InaugurationDay

It was a highly choreographed social media transition. The idea was that the people who had been following @Potus would now find themselves following both it, and the new @Potus44 account.

But later in the day, Twitter users started complaining that for some reason, they had found themselves following @POTUS and seeing President Trump's tweets in their feeds — even if they said they'd unfollowed the account purposefully before the handoff, or had never followed it at all.

whoah i unfollowed @POTUS as soon as Obama was out and now THEY HAVE ME SOMEHOW FOLLOWING AGAIN #unfollowinfinity

It wasn't immediately clear why people were seeing Trump's tweets — but many of them weren't happy about it.

Fuck you, @Twitter. I was intentionally NOT following Trump's new account and I come back to see this. This is not… https://t.co/BA4u9m7ory

WTF?! Did Trump just force a bunch of us to follow his account?! I never followed @POTUS here & this morning I wasn… https://t.co/GCRxJr1gag

The apparent glitch also seemed to extend to the vice president's and first lady's Twitter accounts.

Confused as to why @Twitter forced me to follow @potus, @vp and @flotus today when I unfollowed and blocked them for a reason. #stop

@Twitter Not cool that you had me automatically follow POTUS, VP, and FLOTUS! WTH!?

It even happened to an ex-Twitter head of product.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was telling users that the company was looking into the issue and that feeds would eventually catch up.

@micamaryjane @POTUS should unfollow if you unfollowed. Script is taking some time

@GlennF @edbott @POTUS if you unfollowed it will replay. Just taking time.

Twitter's support team also said they were trying to get to the bottom of the issue and it was "being resolved."

While there may have been some complications during the @POTUS transition today, the issue is being resolved.

BuzzFeed News has reached out to Twitter for comment.


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