Biden won’t inherit followers of White House Twitter accounts: Official
Social networking service Twitter has said that followers of White House Twitter accounts will not be retained when the handles are handed over to U.S. president-elect Joe Biden on Inauguration Day.
Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio had said in a statement on Tuesday that unlike incumbent President Donald Trump, who inherited millions of followers on the multiple White House accounts from the Obama administration, Mr. Biden would be presented with none on his January 20 inauguration.
The American microblogging service did not state reasons for its decision, which would see official U.S. Twitter accounts such as @POTUS and @WhiteHouse jointly lose almost 60 million followers.
Other affected accounts include @VP, @FLOTUS, @PressSec, @Cabinet and @LaCasaBlanca.
“Twitter will notify followers of these accounts to provide context that the content will be archived and allow them the choice to follow the Biden administration’s new accounts,” CNN reported Mr. Pacilio to have said in a statement.
“For example, people who follow @WhiteHouse will be notified that the account has been archived as @WhiteHouse45 and given the option to follow the new @WhiteHouse account,” the Twitter spokesman added.
Mr. Biden’s transition team has, however, pushed back against the move, describing it as unnecessary.
“Twitter’s reluctance to transfer millions of followers from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration unnecessarily politicizes what otherwise should be a routine transfer of communication from one administration to the next,” spokesman for Biden-Harris transition team, Cameron French, told the CNN Wednesday.
Mr. French argued that the decision was capable of disrupting the incoming government’s ability to directly communicate its policies to citizens.
The Twitter app has been long touted as an integral communication channel of the United States government.
First used by former President Barack Obama, incumbent U.S. leader Donald Trump — a prolific tweeter has transformed usage of the networking service to a platform for announcement of official government correspondence, including hirings and firings.
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