Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey on Sunday apologised to users after thousands of people were forced to follow United States President Donald Trump because of a technical glitch. The control of the @POTUS account was transferred from outgoing president Barack Obama to Trump after the latter took the oath of office on Friday. However, many users who had unfollowed the handle after the transfer saw themselves following @POTUS once again, without having opted for it.

Dorsey took to the micro-blogging platform to explain the chaos. He said those who had earlier followed Obama’s new handle – @POTUS44 – were automatically set to follow the @POTUS handle now run by Trump. Some Twitter users who had unfollowed the @POTUS handle in the past were also marked to now follow the handle.

“We believe this affected about 560,000 people. This was a mistake, it wasn’t right, we own it, and we apologise. No excuses,” he said. The actual follow list was later restored, Dorsey said. “We believe we’ve corrected all accounts to reflect your follow/unfollow intent,” he tweeted.