Biden Twitter Account Starts With Zero Followers
Joe Biden has launched his new official presidential Twitter account, but was forced to start it with zero followers. The president-elect’s campaign is said to be unhappy with the move, which marks a change from the previous transition when Barack Obama left office.
Twitter recently said that Biden’s account won't automatically retain its existing followers. Instead, Twitter will give followers the option to follow accounts under the Biden administration.
This is a reversal from what Twitter did in 2017 when the Trump administration took over accounts from the Obama administration. Then, Twitter essentially duplicated the existing accounts, creating an archive of Obama-era tweets and followers and building a new set of accounts for the incoming administration that retained all of those followers without any of the tweets.
Social media helps people, including the president, instantly disseminate a message to a large number of people online. Twitter's decision to not automatically transfer followers could limit the number of people the upcoming administration will be able to reach on the web.
The Biden campaign is unhappy with the move, which marks a change from the previous transition from Barack Obama.
The new account, @PresElectBiden, transformed into the official @POTUS (President of the United States) one on inauguration day on 20 January. Mr Biden's own account had 24 million followers, whereas the new @POTUS account presently has just 6.3 million followers, a week after the event.
His team has also registered new accounts - @FLOTUSBiden for the future first lady. 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 has not explained why the decision was made, and said it had nothing further to add to its official blog. In that post it said: "These institutional accounts will not automatically retain the followers from the prior administration," without a reason why.
Obama was the first US leader to have an official Twitter account. The @POTUS account was set up during his tenure in 2015.At the end of his second term, a transition plan for handing over the official accounts to Mr Trump was drawn up - with @POTUS going to the new administration. It said that the White House has been using a special archiving tool to capture all content, including deleted tweets because of the Presidential Records Act of 1978 mandating the preservation of all presidential records.
A key goal of the Obama transition was to keep social media posts on the platforms where they were created, but Donald Trump has been permanently suspended from its platform and it remains unclear if it will ever archive his account for posterity.
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