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Joe Biden: His government is getting some accounts that the Trump team has been using so far
Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Twittter plans several important governmental accounts restart on 20 January, including the presence of the White House @WhiteHouse and the account @POTUS that for the
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US media such as Bloomberg report this with reference to Joe Biden's digital boss Rob Flaherty and statements from Twitter.
So far, the accounts are in the hands of the Trump administration.
@WhiteHouse has 26 million followers, @POTUS 33.2 million.
Both accounts are therefore less popular than Donald Trump's personal, more intensely recorded account @realDonaldTrump with 88.5 million followers.
With a double-digit million number of followers, they are still very large and relevant by Twitter standards.
The official government accounts are now to be passed on to the upcoming US President Joe Biden in the course of his inauguration, as Twitter proceeded with the previous change in government.
However, Twitter's previous plan to zero the accounts would be a turnaround.
After the election in 2016 or when the office was handed over at the beginning of 2017, when various Twitter accounts were transferred from the Obama administration to the Trump administration, the followers were not deleted: Although the tweets from the Obama era were archived, the accounts retained their audience .
Bloomberg writes that @WhiteHouse and @POTUS each had more than 13 million followers at the time of the change of government.
A different approach than the previous time
"In 2016, the Trump administration took over all of Barack Obama's Twitter followers, who followed @POTUS and @WhiteHouse - at the urging of Team 44," emphasizes Biden digital boss Flaherty, with Team 44 he means Barack Obama's team, as Obama is 44. Was US President.
"In 2020 Twitter will inform us that the Biden government will have to start from scratch with immediate effect."
It is not yet known why Twitter is changing its approach.
The service told The Verge magazine that it was in ongoing discussions with Biden's transition team, "on a number of issues relating to the transfer of accounts around the White House."
“The Verge” also learned from Twitter that everyone who currently follows @POTUS or @WhiteHouse should receive a notification on the day of Biden's inauguration that the accounts would now be archived.
At the same time, users should be given an option to follow the Biden counterparts of those accounts.
It is unclear what exactly these hints will look like.
And an automatic follower transition also seems to be ruled out.
Donald Trump's @ POTUS account is to be renamed to @ POTUS45 and switched to inactive on January 20th, according to "The Verge".
According to Bloomberg, the Biden team is meanwhile saying that they want to take the followers of the previous account @ Transition46 to @WhiteHouse.
@ Transition46 only had 1.2 million followers as of Wednesday.
Joe Biden's personal account @JoeBiden currently has 21.7 million followers.
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