Twitter explains transfer of White House accounts as Biden's inauguration day closes in

American microblogging website, Twitter on January 14 laid out its plan for Inauguration Day in the United States and the transfer of the White House accounts for the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden and vice-president-elect Kamala Harris. In a blog post, Twitter explained that similar to in 2017, it has been working with the United States government to support the archival as well as the transition of Twitter accounts across the different agencies. Further, US’ first Second Man, Kamala harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff will assume a newly created account with username @SecondGentleman.

Twitter said, “As we did in 2017, Twitter is actively working with the US government to support the archival and transition of Twitter accounts across administrations.”

“As President-elect Biden is sworn in on January 20, 2021, Twitter will facilitate the transfer of institutional White House Twitter accounts, including @WhiteHouse, @POTUS, @VP, @FLOTUS, and @PressSec,” it added.

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Existing tweets will be publicly available, archived

Twitter also explained that firstly, the website would transfer the current institutional accounts to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where both the tweets and the account history will remain publicly available and the account usernames will also be updated to reflect their archived status. The platform also explained with an example that @POTUS account will be publicly archived as @POTUS45 similar to the Obama administration’s account has been archived as @POTUS44.

Twitter said, “Once this archival process is completed, Twitter will transfer the institutional accounts to the Biden administration to assume ownership, along with a new account: @SecondGentleman.”

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“People on Twitter will be able to watch the transition of power take place in real-time as accounts for the White House, President, Vice President, First Lady and White House Press Secretary inherit their new institutional usernames: @Transition46 will become @WhiteHouse, @PresElectBiden will become @POTUS, @SenKamalaHarris will become @VP, @FLOTUSBiden will become @FLOTUS, and @PressSecPsaki will become @PressSec. The Tweets, account history, and followers will transition between these accounts,” it explained while acknowledging that "institutional accounts will not automatically retain the followers from the prior administration."

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