Biden campaign says Twitter will wipe POTUS account's followers

[BUtterfield 8 41,819]

The digital director for President-elect Joe Biden’s presidential campaign said Tuesday that Twitter told the Biden team it will be wiping followers from the official POTUS and WhiteHouse Twitter accounts before transferring them to the Biden administration. 

The move would be different than what the social media platform did in 2016 when transferring the accounts to President Trump’s administration from former President Obama’s, Rob Flaherty, the Biden campaign’s digital director, said. 

“In 2016, the Trump admin absorbed all of President Obama's Twitter followers on @POTUS and@WhiteHouse — at Team 44's urging,” Flaherty tweeted Tuesday. “In 2020, Twitter has informed us that as of right now the Biden administration will have to start from zero.”

Obama was the nation's 44th president. 
 

Twitter later released a statement confirming that the “@WhiteHouse, @POTUS, @VP, @FLOTUS, @PressSec, @Cabinet, and @LaCasaBlanca” accounts will not automatically retain their existing followers after they are transferred to the Biden administration on Inauguration Day. 

“Instead, Twitter will notify followers of these accounts to provide context that the content will be archived and allow them the choice to follow the Biden administration’s new accounts. For example, people who follow @WhiteHouse will be notified that the account has been archived as @WhiteHouse45 and given the option to follow the new @WhiteHouse account,” Twitter said. 

The company’s statement comes after a back-and-forth earlier Tuesday between Flaherty and Twitter spokesperson Nicholas Pacilio. 

Pacilio would not confirm Flaherty’s statement Tuesday afternoon and said the social media platform is still speaking with the Biden transition team about the transfer of the accounts. 

“Twitter has been in ongoing discussions with the Biden transition team on a number of aspects related to White House account transfers,” Pacilio said in a statement. 

Flaherty doubled down on his comment in response to Pacilio’s statement, tweeting that he’s “happy to share the email thread where we pushed back and we were told this was unequivocal.”

Pacilio responded, “Hey Rob, no need i’m familiar with it!”

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[Bottom 1,842]

Honestly it is a good choice. The the trump supporters who followed the account would have been trolling the tweets constantly, atleast this way it is only going to be people who actually choose to follow biden

[BlondeQueenOfGGD 25,454]

[StarstruckIllusion 53,580]

Just don’t delete the tweets. They’re messy and gross, but important receipts to have for historical reasons. We can all read the dates and guess who said what 

[Enigma 7,182]

5 minutes ago, StarstruckIllusion said:

Just don’t delete the tweets. They’re messy and gross, but important receipts to have for historical reasons. We can all read the dates and guess who said what 

Couldn’t they make the current account “@POTUS45” and make Biden’s @POTUS? I always thought the idea of giving them the same account was weird.

[StarstruckIllusion 53,580]

2 minutes ago, Enigma said:

Couldn’t they make the current account “@POTUS45” and make Biden’s @POTUS? I always thought the idea of giving them the same account was weird.

That works too