Twitter will make Joe Biden's @POTUS and @WhiteHouse account to make a fresh start with zero followers once he is sworn in as the next president of the United States on January 20. Twitter will not transfer existing the followers of the official accounts to the new administration, Rob Flaherty, Biden's digital director, was quoted as saying in media reports on Tuesday.
The accounts for @VP, @FLOTUS, @PressSec, @Cabinet, and @LaCasaBlanca will also follow the same. As of now, @POTUS currently has 33.2 million followers, @TheWhiteHouse has 26 million followers on Twitter. The sources say the decision is a reversal from what Twitter did in 2017 when the Trump administration took over accounts from the Obama administration. A newsagency reported, "Back then, Twitter essentially duplicated the existing accounts, creating an archive of Obama-era tweets and followers and building a new set of accounts for the incoming administration that retained all of those followers without any of the tweets".
Twitter said in a statement it is "in ongoing discussions with the Biden transition team on a number of aspects related to White House account transfers." The company last month has informed all existing tweets on those accounts will be archived and it will transfer the accounts 'reset to zero tweets' to Biden. Donald Trump's @POTUS account will be renamed @POTUS45 and "frozen as-is". Trump will be in control of @realDonaldTrump, but with less protections than before.
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