UPDATE: Twitter completes its transition plans for the @POTUS account as on Sunday. It is now up to the Twitterati to follow/unfollow the Trump’s presidential Twitter account @POTUS, as the massive transition in this social media era concludes. As for the Obama fans, they can follow him on his personal account to keep up with his posts.CEO Jack Dorsey for twitter not only announced the end of the process but also apologized to the fellow users. He mentioned,
“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.”
-12:16 AM – 22 Jan 2017
PREVIOUSLY: To further add salt to those US presidential election burns to most Americans, certain Twitter users — who followed President Obama’s Twitter account — might have been forced to follow the new, Trump presidential Twitter account @POTUS due to some server issues currently prevalent. And the follow or unfollow changes made to the same, will not take effect immediately.
As soon as the swearing ceremony for the Twitter-obsessed American president Donald Trump concluded, users started reporting that the platform was automatically making them follow him. Even, if some of them have unfollowed it previously or have chosen to unfollow it that very instant, they are still linked to the @POTUS account.
Numbers for the account have suddenly been deluging with tweets swelling up the feed of users. The glitch also continued for other Twitter accounts, including that of the Vice President and the First Lady. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took upon him to shed light on the issue. He said that the same is being caused due to automated transfer process plotted out by the Obama team. The Twitter team has already taken notice of the series of events and is investigating further into it.
@taradublinrocks @3LWTV @SteveScalise @POTUS @WhiteHouse looking into this. We timestamped at 9a as planned (per post)
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
@kristapley @keithcalder investigating. Script was to move POTUS to POTUS44 and new POTUS. Shouldn’t follow if there was never a follow
— jack (@jack) January 21, 2017
Twitter first took a snapshot of the @POTUS account at 9 A.M and is now replaying a series of actions to transfer the account’s followers to the new @POTUS44 archive account. Users who are following the @POTUS account are by default being forced to follow the @POTUS44 handle, an archive for Obama’s Administration.
This account will now be maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). A similar transition plan was laid back in October by Obama’s team during his election. Now, the Twitter accounts of both representatives have ended up with the then 14+ million followers.
Twitterati is not happy with the ongoing concerns and has been stocking up the platform with related tweets. Some of the tweets expressed their outrage as under,
whoah i unfollowed @POTUS as soon as Obama was out and now THEY HAVE ME SOMEHOW FOLLOWING AGAIN #unfollowinfinity.
F*** you, @Twitter. I was intentionally NOT following Trump’s new account and I come back to see this. This is not cool.
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?!
While the twitter support account @support calming the agitated users tweeted,
We are aware of the issue with migrating @POTUS followers and investigating. More soon.
— Twitter Support (@Support) January 21, 2017
You might have to wait till tomorrow for the massive transition in this social media era. If waiting is not a suitable alternative, you could try flipping back and forth or building pressure on Twitter executives through your tweets. Like that would be of any help!
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