Trump's millions of @POTUS followers won't pass to Biden when he takes over account

[midian182]

In brief: Back in 2017, the @POTUS account along with its millions of followers passed from Barrack Obama to Donald Trump, but Joe Biden won't get the same treatment. Twitter has confirmed that the incoming president will not inherit the 33.2 million people following the account when he takes control.

Twitter says it will notify followers of White House accounts "to provide context that the content will be archived and allow them the choice to follow the Biden administration's new accounts." In addition to @POTUS, these include @WhiteHouse, which has 26 million followers, @VP (10.3 million), @FLOTUS (16.4 million), @PressSec (6.3 million), @Cabinet (183.9K), and @LaCasaBlanca (169.8K).

Social Media, especially Twitter, has become an important platform for presidential announcements, and the threat of losing millions of followers hasn't gone down well with Biden's team. Rob Flaherty, the presidential campaign's digital director, tweeted that "as of right now the Biden administration will have to start from zero."

In 2016, the Trump admin absorbed all of President Obama's Twitter followers on @POTUS and @WhiteHouse -- at Team 44's urging.

In 2020, Twitter has informed us that as of right now the Biden administration will have to start from zero. https://t.co/wj1R02SmiK

— Rob Flaherty (@Rob_Flaherty) December 22, 2020

Flaherty told Bloomberg that the Biden team had pushed back on Twitter's plans but "were told this was unequivocal." The company said that it "has been in ongoing discussions with the Biden transition team on a number of aspects related to White House account transfers."

Followers of the current White House accounts will be informed that these are being archived with "45" added to the usernames. People will also also be given the option to follow the updated accounts.

The 21.7 million followers of Joe Biden's @JoeBiden account will be encouraged to follow the new @POTUS with a one-time front-page notification.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/88072-trump-millions-potus-followers-wont-pass-biden-when.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

It’s absolutely a shame that the presidency has now been brought down to the level of social media trolling.

Be that as it may: Biden will not be the same Twitter troll that Trump was. There may be a official releases from the White House through social media but we will never see the callous insanity and nonsense that we saw in the last four years again.

I would expect that the Biden presidency – followed by the Kamala Harris Presidency will treat Twitter/Facebook/YouTube the exact same way that the Barack Obama administration treated it. Every single post will be and official stance of the White House with no levity or carelessness allowed.

Fortunately: Biden isn’t obsessed with “size” and although he had more than 80 million voters I am fairly certain that his Twitter will exceed 25 million but he really doesn’t care about it nor does he use it.

 

[wiyosaya]

If it were me, I am not so sure I would mind losing all those followers. I bet many of them will be a tough crowd to Biden, and would likely troll him.

 

[SaltySaltMiner]

This CCP controlled puppet will never become the US President, sorry, ain't happeinging.

 

[wiyosaya]

It’s absolutely a shame that the presidency has now been brought down to the level of social media trolling.

Be that as it may: Biden will not be the same Twitter troll that Trump was. There may be a official releases from the White House through social media but we will never see the callous insanity and nonsense that we saw in the last four years again.

I would expect that the Biden presidency – followed by the Kamala Harris Presidency will treat Twitter/Facebook/YouTube the exact same way that the Barack Obama administration treated it. Every single post will be and official stance of the White House with no levity or carelessness allowed.

Fortunately: Biden isn’t obsessed with “size” and although he had more than 80 million voters I am fairly certain that his Twitter will exceed 25 million but he really doesn’t care about it nor does he use it.

The posts certainly will not be Trumpish.

 

[winjer]

Not having a troll in the White House and on POTUS will be refreshing.

 

[Nobina]

Not sure if Biden knows how to use Twitter. He'll probably have someone controlling his social media.

 

[Endymio]

It’s absolutely a shame that the presidency has now been brought down to the level of social media trolling.

How dare Trump try to communicate directly with the American people. That's a level of transparency we certainly can't allow. How else will we get the media's spin on things?

Every single [Biden] post will be and official stance of the White House with no levity or carelessness allowed."

On this you are likely correct, given that Obama required all reporters at press conference to submit their questions in writing in advance. His team then wrote out the answers, and Obama only called on those with questions he wished to answer. Biden will follow the same playbook.

 

[hahahanoobs]

In my head:
Good riddance!

 

[Thretosix]

The septic tank needs to be emptied every once in a while...

 

[duckofdeath]

How dare Trump try to communicate directly with the American people. That's a level of transparency we certainly can't allow. How else will we get the media's spin on things?

On this you are likely correct, given that Obama required all reporters at press conference to submit their questions in writing in advance. His team then wrote out the answers, and Obama only called on those with questions he wished to answer. Biden will follow the same playbook.

Ah, the good olde Qanons. Where "reality" is what the likes of Tim Apple or T**** tells you it is. Those lies you spread has been debunked more times than T**** has been in court.

 

[SixTymes]

A 47 year career politician whos only talent is plagiarism, followed by lip service. Oh yeah, that'll turn out well.

 

[Puiu]

How dare Trump try to communicate directly with the American people. That's a level of transparency we certainly can't allow. How else will we get the media's spin on things?

On this you are likely correct, given that Obama required all reporters at press conference to submit their questions in writing in advance. His team then wrote out the answers, and Obama only called on those with questions he wished to answer. Biden will follow the same playbook.

Lying and other forms of disinformation are not "communication", definitely not fit for a social account for the freaking president of the US.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

"tech news"

 

[Uncle Al]

Simply no reason for this practice. They could simply tell all users the account was changing and they were at liberty to either keep the attachment or delete it, thus allowing the new President to address all the followers .... but to be perfectly blunt, I think Biden should drop twitter all together and go with the long standing media so there is time to "think" about what is being put out and not something from the gut ......

 

[Endymio]

Lying and other forms of disinformation are not "communication

Twitter has no problem with Joe Biden's disinformation, such as "I was never aware of my son's business dealings", or disinformation such as "Trump called Covid-19 a hoax" or "Trump cheated on his taxes". In fact, they actively promote such.

 

[psycros]

Ah, the good olde Qanons. Where "reality" is what the likes of Tim Apple or T**** tells you it is. Those lies you spread has been debunked more times than T**** has been in court.

Except, y',know, none of it has been debunked. I suppose you believe there's no election fraud either despite six people already going to prison for it and more on the way. Oh, and Bill Clinton's team also screened every single question ahead of time - that's irrefutable. This is how Democrats always roll. No idea what Tim Cook has to do with any of this.

 

[Carmaine]

I'm all for transparency, but given how our current president has handled social media, IMHO, I think there shouldn't be any social media accounts for any and future POTUS.

 

[cliffordcooley]

The Biden team should be happy. They are saving Biden from humiliation of everyone leaving him.

 

[Arbie]

Of course a President can communicate directly with the people, and how they choose to do it is up to them. Joe Biden has about 20 million Twitter followers and won't have any problem continuing with that. If he prefers scripted questions - fine. That seems to have worked well for a long time. I prefer a Presidency with both truth and decorum.

But at least the world will be done with the narcissistic neo-fascist nutball screaming lies direct from the Oval Office. Over 20,000 per the latest fact-checking. A pathological liar (per Ted Cruz) now locked in his own alternate reality (per staunch supporter Pat Robertson), listening only to the few extremists (eg. Ted Cruz) who will still feed his fantasies. Still doing his best to divide our country and attack our democratic processes, to keep his grip on the Republican party and keep those donations ($300M+ since the election!) coming in - most of which can and will go to pay his business debts. Still howling about the election, despite 60(!) court cases in which not one count of significant fraud was even alleged(!) much less proven. Still inciting his followers to violence ("watch for wildness on Jan 6!"). And much more.

Again: the tragedy is that around half our citizens - on no evidence other than Trump's screaming - think that the most secure and certainly the most scrutinized election in our history was a fraud! An awful legacy on top of everything else.

In the face of this our "conservative" (conserving what??) enablers and apologists resort to "whataboutism", on the crazy premise that because some Democrat did something wrong in the past, it's OK for Trump to do everything wrong now - with no apparent limits. They should be ashamed.

Our country is slowly crawling towards Jan 20 and getting this menace out of the White House; and one nice marker will indeed be no more insane @POTUS tweets.

 

[Endymio]

Still howling about the election, despite 60(!) court cases in which not one count of fraud was even alleged(!)

I find it difficult to believe anyone in the entire world, much less the US, is misinformed enough to believe this. Quite a few of the cases did indeed allege fraud. Just one example:

" On Nov. 10, the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the certification of Michigan's election results. It included affidavits from over 100 poll watchers who alleged witnessing instances of fraud... "

Many of the suits did not allege fraud, simply because they were addressing other matters, such as Pennsylvania's Democratic Secretary of State, who illegally extended the deadline for accepting mail-in ballots immediately before the election.

And of course we know inarguably there was fraud. In Georgia alone, for instance, 1,000 voters were found to have fraudulently voted twice-- and these were only caught because they were stupid enough to use their own name. Since the state doesn't allow ballots to be audited or signatures compared to the voter registration card, we'll never know how many people cast fraudulent ballots in a name other than their own.

 

[Arbie]

Quite a few of the cases did indeed allege fraud...

Yes, we like to play with words. So six cases of fraud out of 150 million votes is "FRAUD", right? And half of them have been Republicans. See current link below.

Again - apologists, enablers, and trivialists. You're right at the top of the latter. None of these results are unusual or even REMOTELY justify the screaming and national political hysteria Trump has engineered, then or now. And you know it; you just like to keep arguing, looking for factoids to contest.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/voter-fraud-investigations-2020/2020/12/22/bdbe541c-42de-11eb-b0e4-0f182923a025_story.html

 

[Endymio]

So six cases of fraud out of 150 million votes is "FRAUD", right?

One case of fraud is fraud. That's how language works. In any case, you've conveniently ignored that just moments ago, you were claiming that fraud hadn't even been alleged, much less proven.

And no, it's not just "six cases". It's several thousand so far. Not even to sway the results admittedly ... but since most states lack even the most basic procedures to audit mail-in ballots, we'll never know just how much fraud there was.

We also know that, in several battleground states, the rejection rate for mail-in ballots dropped inexplicably to less than one twentieth their normal rate. This despite the huge number of first-time voters, who have about triple the rejection rate of experienced voters, and thus the overall rate should have been much higher than normal. Unsurprisingly, the low rejection rates all center in urban areas controlled by Democratic vote-counters. So far, the best explanation offered for this astonishing anomaly is that "voters were just really careful."

 

[p51d007]

If I could wave a magic wand, twitter, and 99.99% of so called social "media" would be gone.
Media it isn't and, it is a PRIME example of why our founding fathers (USA) did NOT want a
"pure democracy", which in essence is emotional mob rule. It is why they also need to get
rid of the 17th amendment. The "people" have representation, called the house. The senate,
as designed, was to be the voice of each state. When you have the media saying "this is trending
on twitter", that's just lazy journalism, and they also hope it changes opinion. What someone says/does being a twitter handle can be anything.

 

[SalaSSin]

Hmm. This is more a post to see whiny Trumpists say "Stop the steal" and other conspiracy bullshit, and Biden supporters trying to counter it.

I'm sorry, Techspot, but I think sticking to pure Technews would be better. Stick to the technology, not to who's using it and what they're saying.