At the last US presidential transition, in early 2017, Barack Obama handed over to Donald Trump the official account of the President of America, @POTUS, to Donald Trump. The transition was simple, the account remaining almost the same, with the tweets published by Obama archived, while Trump kept all the followers until then. In the case of the Trump-Biden transition, Twitter announced that it will delete all followers from the @POTUS account, but also others related to White House functions.
Twitter will force the new Biden administration to start from scratch on official accounts
All posts from the accounts @POTUS (President of the United States), @VP (Vice President), @FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States), @PressSec (Press Secretary), @Cabinet (Chief of Staff) @WhiteHouse / @ LaCasaBlanca (White House) will be archived and the followers deleted. Basically, these will be new accounts, which will have to attract new followers, even if in the past they also kept the followers gathered during the Obama era and those who came during the Trump administration.
It is not clear why Twitter made this decision, but there are still discussions between the representatives of the social network and Joe Biden’s team. Representatives of the President-elect say that the new administration will start with a big disadvantage in the digital field compared to previous administrations. However, Twitter is probably trying to avoid a series of negative messages from Trump supporters, who will start receiving messages from the new president.
Currently, @POTUS has 33 million followers, @WhiteHouse has 26 million, @FLOTUS has 16 million and @PressSec has 6 million. Also, Donald Trump did not use this account much, despite the fact that he “inherited” it from Obama. He preferred to publish most of the messages on his personal account @realDonaldTrump, which until January is protected by law and cannot be blocked by Twitter. However, once his term ends, he will have to follow Twitter rules more strictly.
The transition of accounts will take place in January, when Joe Biden will be sworn in. The content on the @POTUS account until then will be archived under the name @ POTUS45, marking the fact that Donald Trump was the 45th president of the United States of America.
Robert J. Smith is still early into his career as tech reporter but has already had his work published in many major publications including JoyStiq and Android Authority. In regards to academics, Robert earned a degree in business from Fordham University. Robert has passion for emerging technology and covers upcoming products and breakthroughs in science and tech.