After Twitter, Facebook has now confirmed it will also transfer the official POTUS account on its platform to President-elect Joe Biden after he is inaugurated on January 20, regardless of whether incumbent leader Donald Trump concedes before that.
Twitter on Friday said it was going to transfer the @POTUS account to Biden the day he is sworn in. Facebook on Saturday joined the micro-blogging platform in doing the same.
"In 2017, we worked with both the Obama Administration and incoming Trump Administration to make sure the transition of their Facebook and Instagram accounts was seamless on January 20th, and we expect to do the same here," the company said in a statement, reports The Verge.
Twitter has announced that it will handover the @POTUS (President of the United States) account to American President-elect Joe Biden after he is inaugurated on January 20, 2021, regardless of whether incumbent leader Donald Trump concedes before that.
The POTUS US government account currently has more than 32.8 million followers. The current tweets posted during the Trump administration will be archived, and the account will be reset to zero tweets.
In a statement to The Hill news website, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed on Friday that the tech giant is "actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021", which also includes @WHITEHOUSE, @VP, @FLOTUS, and a number of other official accounts.
Govt Related Accounts
The process is being done in consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration, the spokesperson added.The micro-blogging site has also confirmed that Twitter staffers will soon meet representatives from the Biden-Harris team to "review how the new administration plans to use its government-related accounts".
Major media outlets have projected Biden as the winner of the November 3 presidential election after he won more than the 270 electoral votes needed to secure victory.Trump, who claimed that the election was a fraud, is yet to concede and was also mounting challenges in court over allegations of vote count misconduct.
A federal law sets what is called the "Safe Harbor" deadline, falling on December 8 this year, the day by which states must submit the winner of the presidential election if they are to be insulated from legal disputes. Electoral College representatives will meet six days later, on December 14, to formally select the next US President.
From January 20 next year, Trump will lose special privileges on Twitter and his tweets will be treated as any other user. Facebook, however, did not say anything about special privileges.
