President-elect Joe Biden’s team wants what President Donald Trump has, but Twitter won’t let them grab it.
Twitter ruffled Team Biden’s feathers Thursday by announcing that it would not automatically transfer the followers of the current @POTUS account to Biden when he takes over the account Wednesday after being sworn into office.
In a blog post, Twitter said that “institutional accounts” like @POTUS, @FLOTUS, @WhiteHouse and @VP “will not automatically retain the followers from the prior administration.”
The current institutional accounts’ usernames, Twitter said, “will be updated to reflect their archived status. For example, the Trump administration’s @POTUS account will be publicly archived as @POTUS45.”
The incoming Biden administration will inherit the institutional accounts’ old usernames, but not their followers.
“People on Twitter who previously followed institutional White House Twitter accounts, or who currently follow relevant Biden or Harris Twitter accounts, will receive in-app alerts and other prompts that will notify them about the archival process, as well as give them the option to follow the new administration’s Twitter accounts,” Twitter said.
That did not sit well with Biden’s team, because Biden will not be able to have the 33 million followers of Trump’s @POTUS account.
As Forbes noted, when Trump assumed the presidency, his @POTUS account inherited the followers of former President Barack Obama.
“They are advantaging President Trump’s first days of the administration over ours,” Rob Flaherty, the incoming director of digital strategy in the Biden White House, told Bloomberg.
“If we don’t end the day with the 12 million followers that Donald Trump inherited from Barack Obama, then they have given us less than they gave Donald Trump, and that is a failure,” he said.
Absolutely, profoundly insufficient.https://t.co/417reFEEYW
— Rob Flaherty (@Rob_Flaherty) January 15, 2021
On inaug day:
-FB is transferring @JoeBiden's followers over to POTUS
-Snap is handing us @WhiteHouse
-YT is giving us all of the @WhiteHouse Subs
-Twitter is starting us at zero…but recommended the President of the United States tag other accounts to encourage growth
— Rob Flaherty (@Rob_Flaherty) January 15, 2021
There's a lot of ~~normal~~ people who follow the President in the same way they follow…The Rock or Demi Lovato. It's actually a pretty normal early behavior in joining a social network! It's why the account is a public good. https://t.co/XouZvLIJM5
— Rob Flaherty (@Rob_Flaherty) January 15, 2021
Twitter noted there will be one new official account, @SecondGentleman, for Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
As Biden assumes office, several Twitter accounts will change, the platform said. It announced that @Transition46 will become @WhiteHouse, @PresElectBiden will become @POTUS, @SenKamalaHarris will become @VP, @FLOTUSBiden will become @FLOTUS and @PressSecPsaki will become @PressSec.
Twitter has blocked Trump from using the @POTUS account, and permanently suspended his personal Twitter account.
