So after all that, maybe it’s for the best that the official White House accounts get a fresh start and a chance to rebuild from the ground up. When he leaves office in January, Trump will still have control over his personal account, which he used far more than the official accounts and which has millions more followers than and combined. It will be interesting to see how they treat him once his account isn’t subject to special rules for public officials Twitter has already said it would consider taking down Trump tweets that violate its rules (currently, it only tags them with a fact-check). Only in the last year, when it became apparent that there was a real chance he would lose the election, did social media platforms try to curb the misinformation he expertly used them to spread. President Trump has faced few consequences for his tweets. He has lied, frequently, and then watched those lies spread across social media before making their way onto traditional media formats to be seen and heard by millions if not billions. It’s therefore ironic that Trump would be the victim of viral misinformation-by-tweet after being a misinformation superspreader himself. The platform also enabled Trump to run a successful presidential campaign, run the country, and, finally, run an unsuccessful presidential campaign - all without changing his behavior or tone one bit. Twitter helped Trump get elected, as he used the platform to raise his profile, speak out against Obama, and spread racist birther conspiracies.

Such pettiness would have also been a fitting end to the Twitter presidency. Trump is obsessed with how many followers he has and with having more of them than anyone else, so it would make sense if he were loath to give away the tens of millions of followers acquired during his presidency to the person who beat him. Lowell’s incorrect tweet has gotten thousands of retweets and “Likes,” and understandably so: It is consistent with Trump’s brand to do something like this. Unclear still whether Trump admin has asked for followers to roll over as Obama did in 2016. What might have been a minor issue blew up on - where else? - Twitter on Tuesday afternoon after a freelance journalist named Hugo Lowell tweeted that the Trump administration refused to give its followers to Biden.Ĭorrection: Digital Director for Joe Biden says and accounts being reset to zero followers is Twitter’s decision, not the Trump admin. Among them, a glitch caused people who had deliberately unfollowed the account to automatically follow it again, which many people did not appreciate. Twitter did not provide a reason for the change, but the Wall Street Journal article pointed out that the 2017 Twitter transition had technical issues. “Instead, 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.” “The accounts will not automatically retain their existing followers,” Twitter spokesperson Nick Pacilio said in a statement. Four years ago, and dealing with this issue for the first time, the Obama administration made it a point to make the digital transition as smooth and seamless as possible. The Biden team wants to keep the followers of those accounts, as was the case for the Obama-Trump transition. The transfer has become an issue between Twitter and the Biden transition team, according to the Wall Street Journal. But the combined 60 million followers of those accounts may not be going with them. When Joe Biden becomes president on January 20, his administration will gain control of the and Twitter accounts.

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