Something very weird is going on with Twitter and the POTUS account, and you need to check who you’re following
Something fishy is going on with the official Twitter POTUS account. It looks like some folks may have inadvertently followed President Trump after the inauguration on Friday.
The explanation is a little complicated, but the gist is this: Once President Obama left the office, his Twitter account transferred to an archived account with the handle @POTUS44. The previous @POTUS account rolled over to the new administration, and in theory, should have started at zero.
But, a possible glitch may have forced some of the old president’s followers to follow the new president, even if they didn’t really want to.
While some outlets are reporting it is merely a technical glitch, Deadline suggests it could be little more insidious than that. The outlet’s reporter actually giving the account of what happened was one of the people who unknowingly began following the new @POTUS.
Twitter addressed the problem, describing it as problems with “migration” rather than a glitch or an official order from the White House.
We are aware of the issue with migrating @POTUS followers and investigating. More soon.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 21, 2017
While there is some suggestion is that Trump may have forced Twitter to transfer those followers, that is an unsubstantiated claim.
The new President Trump’s numbers increased rapidly in the hours after the inauguration, jumping to totals that are suspiciously close to his predecessor. This alone could be chalked up as coincidence, but the same issue arose in the Vice President and First Lady’s handles.
This is particularly problematic for the Twitter users who consciously unfollowed the account as a way to avoid seeing the incoming president’s tweets.
While the powers that be try to get to the bottom of the issue, it’s best to check your “following” list to make sure you’re following who you want to be. Both President Obama and President Trump will maintain their personal Twitter accounts, so it should be easy to keep those straight. But you should definitely double check to see if you’re following the new president, so you can make your own choice as to whether or not you’d like to be.
