Twitter Mistakenly Forces 560,000 Users To Follow @Potus; Facebook Post Calling Out Incident Altered

As America ushers in President Donald Trump, subtle and not so subtle changes are arising. With the change in administration comes digital changes galore. In this age of social media where virtually everyone — included elected officials — has an official, verified media presence, it's unsurprising that the president of the United States ("Potus") would have his own Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) handle. Former President Barack Obama could be followed @Potus, but with his term's end, the handle switched to Trump.

However, many Twitter users awoke Saturday to find they were following the new president after having unfollowed or even blocked the name Friday.

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Others claimed to be following @Potus when they had never followed the handle before at all.

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Furthermore, this was not an isolated incident, with users alleging they were also unknowingly following @Flotus, @whitehouse and @vp.

Twitter's Jack Dorsey (@jack) has updated the Twitter community on the event, tweeting, "All: we investigated what happened here, and we made some mistakes (which have been corrected). Some context first."

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Not Your Normal Glitch?

Amid Twitter user complaints of accounts automatically following @Potus without permission, one incident has gone beyond the scope of the supposed glitch.

A Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) post from Benzinga's senior editor Rebecca Sheppard regarding the situation was changed.

The initial Facebook post read: "My twitter account automatically followed @potus this morning. I'm not okay with that. And no, I was not following it under Obama, so it's not a 'glitch' with the changing hands."

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Within minutes, however, the post changed to only read the second and third sentences, was missing the "a" before "glitch" and the time stamp read "HR 1" versus "1 hr."

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Benzinga has reached out to Facebook, but at time of publication, they had not responded.

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