Twitter is working on transferring presidential accounts to President-elect Joe Biden’s team, the company said Thursday.
Ahead of the Jan. 20, “Twitter is actively working with the U.S. government to support the archival and transition of Twitter accounts across administrations,” the company said in a statement.
As Biden is sworn in, Twitter will transfer White House accounts including @WhiteHouse, @POTUS, and @PressSec.
Twitter will first transfer the accounts to the National Archives and Records Administration so the tweets and account history can remain publicly available. President Donald Trump’s @POTUS account, for instance, will be archived as @POTUS45 before @POTUS is transferred to Biden’s team.
Twitter is also adding a new account for Douglas Emhoff, the husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The account will be @SecondGentleman.
“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,” Twitter said. For example, the account of Jen Psaki, Biden’s incoming press secretary, will become @PressSec. Her tweets, account history, and followers will transition.
But the institutional accounts won’t keep followers from the prior administration. People who followed Trump administration accounts will receive a prompt notifying them of the transition. They'll be given the option of continuing to follow the accounts.
Biden on Thursday night noted the upcoming switch.
“Folks—This will be the account for my official duties as President. At 12:01 PM on January 20th, it will become @POTUS. Until then, I’ll be using @JoeBiden,” he tweeted.
