Twitter and Facebook say they will transfer presidential social media accounts to Joe Biden on Inauguration Day

Twitter will transfer the @POTUS account to President-elect Joe Biden when he’s sworn in on Inauguration Day, the company told Politico. Twitter will transfer the account to Biden even if President Donald Trump hasn’t conceded — which he still hasn’t done, despite the election widely being called for Biden earlier this month.

“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 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.”

Other presidential accounts, including @whitehouse, @VP, and @FLOTUS, will be moved over as well, Politico reports. The existing content on all of the accounts will be archived before the transfer, and the accounts will be reset to show zero tweets. Trump will continue to control his personal account, @realDonaldTrump, after Biden’s inauguration, but the account will lose the special protections it gets due to Trump’s status as a world leader — meaning he will be subject to the same rules as the majority of the users on the platform.

On Saturday, Facebook told Reuters it would also transfer the official POTUS account on its platform to the incoming administration. “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.

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