(REUTERS): Twitter and Facebook will transfer control of the @POTUS account to President-elect Joe Biden’s administration on January 20, the social media companies informed.
The @POTUS account on both platforms is the official account of the President of the United States. Other presidential accounts, including @whitehouse, @VP (Vice President), and @FLOTUS (First Lady), will be moved over as well.
The existing content on all of the accounts will be archived before the transfer, and the accounts will be reset to show zero tweets. In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson said, “Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021.”
“As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration,” the spokesperson added.
Meanwhile, Facebook said, “In 2017, we worked with both the Obama Administration and incoming Trump Administration to make sure the transition of their Facebook and Instagram accounts was seamless on January 20th, and we expect to do the same here.”
Trump will continue to control his personal account, @realDonaldTrump, after Biden’s inauguration, but the account will lose the special protections it gets due to Trump’s status as a world leader.
According to a report, Twitter will meet transition officials of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in the coming months to discuss the particulars of how the new administration will use Twitter.
Biden, who has reached the two-week mark since becoming president-elect, is preparing to take office on Jan. 20, but Trump has refused to concede and is seeking to invalidate or overturn the results through lawsuits.
