Social media outlet Twitter (Twitter) said Tuesday (Dec. 22) that it will not automatically transfer tens of millions of followers of official Trump administration accounts to the incoming Biden administration, but will instead let users choose whether they want to continue following. The move will affect official government Twitter accounts such as White House @WhiteHouse and President of the United States @POTUS, which will be transferred to Biden when he takes over as president in January.
Twitter issued a statement noting that these official government accounts “will not automatically retain their current followers. Twitter will notify followers of these accounts, provide a background note that relevant content has been archived, and give them the option to choose whether they want to follow the Biden administration’s new accounts.” For example, users who follow @WhiteHouse will be notified that the account has been archived as the 45th White House (@WhiteHouse45) and allowed to choose whether they want to follow the new White House account.
Opposition nullified
This approach by Twitter is a departure from four years ago, when the Trump team took over a series of official Twitter accounts of the Obama team outright and automatically retained followers. Obama’s historical tweets were moved to another Twitter account, @POTUS44, for archiving. Twitter has not yet publicly explained the reason for the change.
Rob Flaherty, digital director for President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, tweeted Tuesday that Twitter informed them that the Biden administration’s account would start from scratch. He later added in another tweet that the Biden team had objected to Twitter’s plan via email, but was told the decision was clear.
Privileges no more
Twitter’s decision will not affect @realDonaldTrump, the personal account of current U.S. President Donald Trump, which has about 88 million followers and which Trump regularly uses to express his views and even make several major announcements through the platform. This style of governing has been jokingly referred to as “tweeting to rule”.
Although not as widely followed as Trump’s personal account, @POTUS still has about 33 million followers and @WhiteHouse has 26 million. According to Twitter, the shift will also affect other accounts, such as the vice president account @VP, the first lady account @ FLOTUS, the White House spokesperson account @PressSec, the cabinet account @Cabinet and the White House Hispanic account @LaCaSaBlanc.
Since the results of the U.S. election were determined, Twitter has been preparing for the transfer of accounts, and said that Trump will no longer receive “special treatment” after leaving office. The way Twitter handles the accounts of national leaders is different from that of ordinary users. The social media platform believes that the public has the right to know what national leaders say, and these leaders’ comments themselves have a certain news value, even if they make “out-of-bounds comments” will not be forced to delete or block the number, Twitter usually fold or tag the way to retain the tweets and effectively reduce their dissemination.
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