Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc will hand over control of the official accounts of the President of the United States to the Joe Biden administration on January 20, the day of the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States. This was announced on Saturday by representatives of the companies that own the social networks “Twitter” and “Facebook”.
The account, which on both platforms is called @POTUS (an abbreviation for the full name of the position of the head of state – President Of The United States), is the official account of the President of the United States. Donald Trump himself is more actively using his personal accounts on both Twitter (@realDonaldTrump) and Facebook (@DonaldTrump).
At the same time, Trump’s personal pages are more popular among users than the president’s official accounts – for example, 88.9 million people have subscribed to his personal Twitter account. This is almost three times more than the number of subscribers to the president’s official page – 32.8 million.
On Facebook, Trump writes mostly on his personal page, which has 34.6 million subscribers. Trump’s last entry on the president’s official Facebook page, with 6.4 million subscribers, appeared on May 18, 2018, and the president has since stopped posting anything on that account.
“Twitter is actively preparing to support the White House (new team) transfer of accounts on January 20, 2021. As with the 2017 presidential change, this process is being carried out in close collaboration with the National Archives and Records Administration, ”Twitter Inc. representatives told Reuters.
Barack Obama’s official Twitter account has been renamed @ POTUS44 and is now administered by the National Archives and Records Administration.
On the day of Biden’s inauguration, the largest social networks will also transfer the official accounts of the new White House administration, the vice president and the first lady.
“In 2017, we worked with both the Obama administration and the new Trump administration to ensure a seamless transition of their Facebook and Instagram accounts on January 20, and we look forward to doing so in this case,” Facebook Inc commented on the request Reuters.
Biden, who has been named President-elect by leading American media based on preliminary results from all states, is due to take office on January 20. However, Trump has so far refused to admit defeat and is trying to invalidate or overturn election results in a number of states through lawsuits, claiming “massive fraud” as the reason for his loss. No substantial evidence of the large-scale fraud that Trump is talking about has yet been presented.
