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Joe Biden’s presidential Twitter account ‘starts from zero’ with no Trump fans

Joe Biden holds his phone (Getty Images)
Joe Biden holds his phone (Getty Images)

Joe Biden has been given his new official presidential Twitter account — but is starting with zero followers.

The president-elect’s campaign is said to be unhappy with the move, which marks a change from the previous transition when Barack Obama left office.

But it means Biden will not inherit pro-Donald Trump fans.

The new account, @PresElectBiden, will transform into the official @POTUS - President of the United States - on Inauguration Day this Wednesday, January 20.

In its first 14 hours online, it gained nearly 640,000 followers but isn’t following anyone.

President Trump, the first US president impeached twice after inciting last week’s deadly Capitol riot, inherited the @POTUS account's 13 million-plus followers when it moved to him from Obama.

Biden's team was told about the move less than a month ago, and said it meant “the administration will have to start from zero”.

Biden's own account has 24m followers.

Twitter has not explained why the decision was made, the BBC reported.

It had nothing further to add beyond an official blog laying out transition plans. But in a post explained: “These institutional accounts will not automatically retain the followers from the prior administration.”

Twitter said those following the official @POTUS, @VP (Vice-President) and the personal accounts of Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris will receive notifications giving them the option to follow the new official ones.

Biden’s team has also registered @FLOTUSBiden for the future first lady, Jill Biden, and a brand new official account, @SecondGentleman, for Harris's husband Doug Emhoff.

AP
AP

Obama was the first US leader to have an official Twitter account with @POTUS set up during his tenure in 2015.

At the end of his second term, a transition plan for handing over the official accounts to Trump was drawn up.

All of Obama's official tweets were archived for posterity on a separate account, @POTUS44 where they can still be read today.

Twitter said that the official @POTUS account under Trump will be archived in a similar way, under @POTUS45. But Trump rarely used that account, favouring his own Twitter handle.

Twitter notably omitted any mention of the now-suspended @realDonaldTrump account, and declined to answer questions about whether its contents would be archived.

That is despite a declaration by the White House in 2017 that tweets from that account are considered official statements by the President.

However, the US National Archives has already announced that it will archive all social media content from that account, despite Twitter’s lack of a commitment.

It said that the White House has been using a special archiving tool to capture all content, including deleted tweets, because of the Presidential Records Act.

That is likely to result in a record system similar to The Obama White House Social Media Archive, built after the last transition.

A key goal of the Obama transition was to preserve social media posts “on the platforms where they were created”.

But Twitter has permanently suspended Trump from its platform and it remains unclear if it will ever archive his account for posterity.