The @POTUS Twitter account after was handed over to President Donald Trump at noon Friday. | Getty Twitter: Half a million people wrongly made to follow Trump's @POTUS

Amid a swarm of complaints, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted Saturday that an estimated 560,000 people were temporarily made to follow the @POTUS Twitter account after it was handed over to President Donald Trump at noon Friday.

Those affected, said the company, had either opted to unfollow the account while it was still in the hands of then-President Barack Obama or had chosen, post-inauguration, to follow the @POTUS44 account created to archive Obama-era presidential tweets.


"This was a mistake, it wasn't right, we own it, and we apologize," tweeted Dorsey. "No excuses."

The social media company had worked with both Obama administration officials and at least one Trump transition team member to execute the handover of the account.

The decision was made to duplicate the set of followers accumulated on @POTUS during the Obama era on the version of the account handed to the incoming Trump administration that had otherwise been scrubbed of tweets. The move was based on the belief that the account -- and its base of nearly 14 million followers -- was an official government asset properly transferred from one presidential administration to another.

Dorsey said that similiar issues affected the @VP, @WhiteHouse, and @PressSec accounts. The problems, said the company, have been fixed.