Twitter says it will transfer @POTUS to Joe Biden when he is sworn in as president, along with other official accounts; Facebook says it will do the same
which allows rule-breaking tweets to remain up, with warning labels — the moment that Biden is sworn in to office.” https://twitter.com/... Alex Howard / @digiphile : Good to know. We haven't heard anything about how this @whitehouse plans to handle the digital transition, presumably because Trump is in denial & refuses to begin, but this is wonderfully banal. TBD if @Transition46 will push a new .gov live as power transfers, but... probably. https://twitter.com/... Thanks: @dlberes
OneZeroSarah Emerson
Context & Ripple Effects
The Obama-era handover in 2016 set the template: the incoming president receives @POTUS with a clean timeline while predecessor accounts are archived for the public. Twitter's announcement extends that playbook to Biden, and Facebook is matching it — the first time both platforms have publicly committed in advance to the same transfer.
What changed since the initial pledge: the Biden transition team says Twitter told it that @POTUS followers won't carry over this time, a reversal from 2017, so Biden would start from zero rather than inheriting Trump's audience.
First-order effects
Biden takes control of @POTUS and other official handles at swearing-in, but without the inherited follower base the 2017 transfer provided, forcing his team to rebuild reach on an institutional account.
Second-order effects
Archived predecessor accounts become the de facto public record of a presidency's social output, making the platforms — not the National Archives-style process — the custodians of how that record is preserved and surfaced.
Third-order effects
If each cycle's rules can be rewritten by the platforms between transfers — as the follower-reset reversal shows — then private companies effectively set the terms of one of government's most visible communication channels.
The trend: Presidential social-media handovers are hardening into a platform-managed protocol, but with terms that private companies revise each cycle.
New: @POTUS will transfer to Biden at noon on inauguration day, per Twitter, no matter what the Trump team does. (I'd wondered, is there a sticky note with a password that has to get handed over? Nope.) https://www.politico.com/...
I can't think of anything more official ... Twitter, Facebook to hand over @POTUS account to Biden on January 20 https://www.nbcnews.com/... via @nbcnews
NEW: The Trump administration is not giving Joe Biden's transition team access to government email, so Biden's team is implementing its own cybersecurity protocols largely without government help. w/ @dnvolz https://www.wsj.com/...
New: Trump's refusal to accept Biden's win has forced his transition team to secure their own data because the official gov't network for transitions has not been made available to them, prompting fears of exposure to foreign espionage. w/ @AndrewRestuccia https://www.wsj.com/...
I doubt Trump cares much about the @POTUS account, but it's still impressive the level of Facebook's commitment to avoiding any appearance of a spine on even such a mundane a question as this https://twitter.com/...
Why would this be even vaguely in question? Biden will get sworn-in as president on January 20, so obviously he'll get the POTUS Twitter handle then too. https://twitter.com/...
Trump's personal account, “will lose the protections it carries under Twitter's ‘world leaders’ policy — which allows rule-breaking tweets to remain up, with warning labels — the moment that Biden is sworn in to office.” https://twitter.com/...
Good to know. We haven't heard anything about how this @whitehouse plans to handle the digital transition, presumably because Trump is in denial & refuses to begin, but this is wonderfully banal. TBD if @Transition46 will push a new .gov live as power transfers, but... probably. …