President Biden will need some help establishing his social media presence after he takes oath in January of next year. According to Rob Flaherty, Biden’s digital director, Twitter plans on wiping out all of the followers from the @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts once Biden is sworn into office rather than just transferring all of the existing followers over.
Other accounts such as the @VP, @FLOTUS, @PressSec, @Cabinet and @LaCasaBlanca will also have their followers eliminated. As recently reported by The Wall Street Journal, there was actually dispute between the Biden administration and Twitter on whether or not the current followers would be transferred over.
When the Trump administration took over the accounts from the Obama administration back in 2017, Twitter had duplicated the existing accounts thereby creating an archive of Obama-era tweets and followers and also creating new accounts for the incoming administration leaving all of the followers but not any of the tweets.
Twitter hasn’t explained the reason behind the change in policy. Although they did state that there is an ongoing negotiation on a number of facets with regards to the transition of accounts for the Biden administration. Biden’s team has expressed despondence over this policy as they will lose the digital advantage. Flaherty has stated that this decision was indubitable.
On the day of Inauguration, followers of the current accounts will be notified that the that the handle will be archived. However, they will be given the option to follow Biden’s administrations new accounts. Twitter hasn’t released information on how the notification will look like, so this will be something to look out for very soon.
There may be a ton of different outlets from which the president can express his thoughts from, however, there is no denying that Twitter is a major communications channel. The other handles stated above will also be needing a good rebuild on followers.
The current @POTUS account for Donald Trump will be renamed to @POTUS45 and will remain that way for the unforeseeable future but he will still be in control of his personal account @realDonaldTrump but with few security protections unlike before.