Here’s How Twitter Will Transfer @POTUS Account to Biden as He’s Sworn In

Photo Illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

By Araceli Cruz

January 15, 2021

Twitter will be watching the inauguration and give Biden’s team the new presidential handles at the same time.

On Jan. 20, Joe Biden will be sworn in as 46th president of the United States of America. While that transfer of power is happening in the nation’s capital, there will be another type of transfer of power happening on the Internet.

On Jan. 8, Twitter banned President Donald Trump from its platform for inciting violence from his right-wing extremist supporters. Now, during the same moment that President-elect Biden is being appointed as president, the tech giant is handing over Trump’s official presidential Twitter handles to Biden.

RELATED: Twitter Permanently Suspends President Trump

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

The Accounts to Be Transferred from Trump to Biden

Before Twitter transfers these accounts to Biden’s team, they still have to go through the process of securing all of Trump’s tweets—and you know there’s a lot.

“Twitter will transfer current institutional accounts to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where the Tweets and account history will remain publicly available, and the account usernames will be updated to reflect their archived status. For example, the Trump administration’s @POTUS account will be publicly archived as @POTUS45, just as the Obama administration’s account was archived as @POTUS44,” Twitter said.

They add that once the archival process is completed, Twitter will transfer the institutional accounts to the Biden administration to assume ownership, along with a new account: @SecondGentleman.

You may be wondering if Biden will inherit Trump’s followers now that he will adopt the official presidential handles. The answer is no. That’d be a bit awkward.

Twitter says that Biden will not automatically retain the followers from the prior administration. People on Twitter who previously followed institutional White House Twitter accounts, or who currently follow relevant Biden or Harris Twitter accounts, will receive a notification about the archival process, as well as give them the option to follow the new administration’s Twitter accounts.