Twitter says it will hand over the official presidential account to Joe Biden on Inauguration Day

trump twitter — Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Twitter will hand over the official @POTUS account to President-elect Joe Biden when he's sworn in on Inauguration Day, the company said on Friday.
The social media company plans to do the same for other Twitter handles linked to the presidency, including @FLOTUS, @VP, and @whitehouse accounts.
This move won't affect President Trump too much as he's been largely tweeting from his personal account @realDonaldTrump.
However, his private account could be much more highly regulated after he leaves the White House.
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President-elect Joe Biden will be handed over the official @POTUS account when he's sworn in on Inauguration Day, Twitter said in a statement on Friday.

"Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement, according to The Verge. "As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration."

The social media company plans to do the same for other Twitter handles linked to the presidency, including @FLOTUS, @VP, and @whitehouse accounts.

No information will be shared between the Trump team and the incoming Biden administration during the handover, the company said.

Trump's existing tweets on @POTUS will be archived and Twitter will reset the account to zero tweets.

This procedure was the same in 2016 when President Barack Obama handed over the account to Trump. Obama's @POTUS archive can be found here.

Even if Trump doesn't concede, the transition will happen, which he still hasn't officially done after losing the presidential election to Biden on November 7.

In the last four years, Trump has largely been using his personal account — @realDonaldTrump — for most of his tweeting. As a private citizen, he will be able to keep control of that account after the inauguration day.

However, his personal Twitter account could be much more highly regulated, and he could even face suspension or removal, according to Twitter's policies.

This is because his tweets would no longer fall under Twitter's "world leader" exemptions, meaning they may be deemed to be outside the company's terms of public interest.

In the last few weeks, Twitter has been issuing "misleading" and "disputed" labels on several of Trump's tweets about the election being stolen.

There is absolutely no evidence to support Trump's unfounded claims that Democrats "rigged" the election against him.

On Tuesday, Twitter added a new label that reads "Official sources called this election differently," after Trump falsely claimed he won the presidential election.

Between Monday and Friday, the label has been applied to five of the President's tweets.

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