U.S. President Joe Biden has been given his new presidential Twitter account, but was forced to start with zero fans.
The Biden campaign is unhappy with the move, marking a change from a previous transition from Barack Obama.
@PresElectBiden To @POTUS on January 20
The new account, @PresElectBiden, will be officially changed to @POTUS (President of the United States) on the opening inauguration of the administration on January 20.
In its first six hours online it gained nearly 400,000 followers.
Mr Biden’s personal account has 24 million followers.
His team has signed up for new accounts – @FLOTUSBiden for the first lady, Jill Biden, and for the first time, @SecondGentleman, for Ms Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff.
‘A New Beginning’
Donald Trump had inherited 13 million Potus account followers when he transitioned into power following Mr. Obama – but that will not happen in this case.
Mr Biden’s team was told about the move less than a month ago, and said it meant “the administration will have to start from zero”.
Twitter did not explain why the decision was made, and said it would add nothing more than an official blog post outlining the transformation plans.
In the post it is written: “These institution accounts will not automatically retain followers in the previous administration,” without a reason why.
But it was said that people who previously followed the official accounts of @POTUS and @VP (Vice-President), or the accounts of Mr Biden and Deputy President-elect-Harris – would receive notices giving them the opportunity to follow the new official accounts.
Archiving Trump’s Tweets
Mr Obama has become the first American leader to have an official Twitter account. The @POTUS account was created during the period in 2015.
At the end of his second term, a plan was made to change the official accounting of Mr. Trump – and @POTUS went to the new administration.
All of Mr. Obama’s official tweets have been submitted to the next generation in a separate account, @ POTUS44 (which can be read even today).
Twitter said the official @POTUS account under Mr. Trump would be archived in the same way, under @ POTUS45. But Mr. Trump rarely uses that account, preferring his Twitter handle.
Twitter has left any mention of the @realDonaldTrump account currently suspended, and declined to answer questions about whether its content will be retained.
This is despite the White House announcement in 2017 that tweets in that account are considered official statements by the President.
However, the US National Archives has already announced – via tweet – that it will historically keep all social media content from that account, even though Twitter has no obligation to do so.
