Jack Dorsey explains why some users automatically followed the @POTUS account on Twitter

Friday was the US presidential inauguration, where Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America. While the US was celebrating the peaceful transition of power, there was another arena where power had to be transferred: the @POTUS Twitter account.

Here's how it worked. Barack Obama's @POTUS account was archived as @POTUS44, and Trump would start with zero tweets in his new account. People who had been following prior to this would end up following both accounts. The same was planned for other official accounts as well. For example, Joe Biden's @VP account would become @VP44, and @VP would be left to the new Vice President, Mike Pence.

Something went wrong, though. Those that meant to only follow @POTUS44 found themselves automatically following @POTUS, which they never intended to do. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took to his platform to explain.

The Obama Administration worked with all their platforms to craft a transition plan: https://t.co/cyMrananrg
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017

We kicked off that plan at 12p Eastern yesterday: https://t.co/z9DVkI2xAv
— 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

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

So there you have it. It was a bug, rather than a conspiracy to get you to follow Donald Trump. In fairness, this is uncharted territory for Twitter. Obama was the first US President to use @POTUS, so this is the first time that the account has been transferred to someone else. Hopefully, it goes a bit smoother in four or eight years.

Source: SocialTimes