Twitter to hand over @Potus account to Joe Biden on 20 January
Twitter will hand over the official account of the US president to the Joe Biden administration on 20 January, the company said today.
The @Potus account is the president’s official account, and is separate from the personal account used to tweet by Donald Trump to tweet.
“Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021,” Twitter said in a statement.
“As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records.”
The social media platform will also hand over other institutional White House accounts, including @Flotus — First Lady of the United States — @VP and @whitehouse on inauguration day.
It follows reports that Twitter will meet members of Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris’ team in the coming months to discuss how the new administration will use Twitter.
Biden is preparing to take office in January after securing victory in a drawn-out election process earlier this month.
However, Trump is still refusing to concede and is attempting to overturn the result of the election by making baseless claims of voter fraud.
Twitter has previously attracted the ire of Trump after flagging a number of the president’s posts that made false or misleading claims or contained harmful material.
Facebook also took steps to remove misinformation spread by the president as social media took centre stage during a hugely divisive election.