Jan. 16 (UPI) — President-elect Joe Biden has started a new transitional Twitter account to build followers going into his new administration, but he will have to build the official Twitter base from scratch.
Biden’s transition team rolled out the @PresElectBiden account on Thursday night, and everyone who follows that account will be rolled over to the official @POTUS account after the inauguration next Wednesday.
However, Twitter said in a new policy that Biden will not inherit the followers who are currently linked to President Donald Trump‘s @POTUS account.
The same policy applies to the official White House Twitter account.
By law, Trump’s tweets through the official @POTUS account must be archived on Jan. 20 when Biden takes over. They will be publicly archived with the National Archive and Records Administration as @POTUS45. Trump’s personal account has been permanently suspended for violating Twitter rules.
Biden’s administration starting with zero followers is a break from Twitter’s past policy.
When he took office in 2017, Trump inherited all followers who were linked to both of the official accounts under former President Barack Obama.
“They are advantaging President Trump’s first days of the administration over ours,” Rob Flaherty, Biden’s director of White House digital strategy, 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.
“There is value in being able to communicate with an audience that doesn’t agree with us.”
By mid-Friday, the new @PresElectBiden account had nearly 700,000 followers.
Facebook and Instagram plan to roll over all their @POTUS and @WhiteHouse followers when Biden takes office.
Twitter said that followers of @POTUS will receive a message on Wednesday asking if they want to continue following the account.
The Biden administration has also created @FLOTUSBiden for first lady Dr. Jill Biden, which will roll into the @FLOTUS account, and @Transition46 will become @WhiteHouse. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris‘ official Senate account, @SenKamalaHarris, will migrate to the official @VP account.
Twitter has started a new account (@secondgentleman), for Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff — who will be second gentleman of the United States, the first man to hold the title.
