The company has confirmed that before the official account @POTUS is transferred to the elected President Joe Biden, all the followers will be wiped out. This means that the account will be refreshed to zero followed as soon as Joe Biden is handed over. The social media giant won’t allow Biden to continue the account with Trump’s million users; however, in 2017, the company accepted Trump’s request to inherit all the million followers Obama had. Though, all of the tweets from that account were deleted.
Twitter will also remove all the followers from the handles, including @FLOTUS, @VP, @WhiteHouse, @PressSec, @LaCasaBlanca and @Cabinet. The company changed the policy this time but haven’t explained why it did so. Joe Biden’s team is pretty upset about the policy change as they lose all the digital advantage of millions and have to gain the followers from scratch.
On the day when Biden will swear in, followers of the accounts that are being transitioned will be notified that the account is archived and will have the option to follow accounts under Biden’s administration. The handles that will have to rebuild the army of followers currently have millions of them for example, @POTUS has around 33 million followers, @WhiteHouse has about 26 million, @FLOTUS is a family of 16 million, and @PresSec has 6 million.
Donald Trump’s @POTUS handle is going to be renamed as @POTUS45, albeit, Trump will have all the control of his official account, i.e., @realDonaldTrump but, with lesser protections that he used to have before.
