Twitter Will Make Joe Biden's @POTUS Account Start With Zero Followers (theverge.com) 151
AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: President Biden is going to need some Twitter followers. Twitter plans to wipe out all followers from the @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts once Biden is sworn in on January 20th, rather than transferring the accounts' existing followers over to the new administration, according to Rob Flaherty, Biden's digital director. The accounts for @VP, @FLOTUS, @PressSec, @Cabinet, and @LaCasaBlanca will also have their followers wiped, Twitter said. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier today that there was contention between the Biden camp and Twitter over whether followers would transfer over. This is a reversal from what Twitter did in 2017 when the Trump administration took over accounts from the Obama administration. Back then, Twitter essentially duplicated the existing accounts, creating an archive of Obama-era tweets and followers and building a new set of accounts for the incoming administration that retained all of those followers without any of the tweets.
Twitter was always for trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Twitter was always for trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if these are official accounts of the president, etc. I don't know why they would reset. Trump has a personal account if you want to follow him. I can see always following POTUS and never Trump, Obama or Biden
Re:Twitter was always for trump (Score:5, Insightful)
> I can see always following POTUS and never Trump, Obama or Biden
This right here. Twitter is going to annoy a lot of people.
Their execs must be so tied up in cult-of-personality thinking that they don't get that an average citizen might want to hear what whomever the President might is be saying.
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It's a tap of the finger to unfollow as well - but at least you get reminded if you need to unfollow someone. If you don't remember that your follow preferences randomly and uniquely got changed underneath you (and you only heard about it a month before, maybe, if you look at the right news source), you might just not notice it stopped showing up.
Re:Twitter was always for trump (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's to prevent trump from causing a shitshow by claiming "they're all my followers", not Biden's.
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I think it's to prevent backlash from Trumpanzees who will be very angry and confused as to why they are getting messages from someone other than Trump on the @POTUS account.
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Since Trump rarely if ever actually used the @POTUS account does it really matter if it is reset? I would assume that most people that want to get Trump's tweets would already be following his personal Twitter account (@realDonaldTrump) and not @POTUS.
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Yes, but... It would have been an actual opportunity for Joe Biden to reach out to them with a message like "Hello, I'm Joe Biden and I want to understand you, too. Let us talk deeply and thoughtfully. Within 280 characters."
Yes, sarcasm, but still a lost opportunity. Unfortunately I'm remembering the joke about "You make a better door than a window." Twitter is a much better divider than unifier.
I can see both ways. The majority of "Trumpers" (Score:2)
I can see people wanting to follow the office of the president, AND I can see people following President Trump.
I would bet that most, more than half, of President Trump's Twitter followers follow *Trump*. Of course, I haven't polled them all to ask. Just what I suspect is most likely.
As for factual numbers, @potus peaked at 14 million followers when Obama was in office. It has 32 million followers today. So 14 million people were following either "the president" or President Obama, 18 million more started
If I were Biden, wouldn't want 18 million Trumpers (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were Biden and trying to start with a @potus presence, I'm not sure I'd WANT to start out with 18 million Trumpers commenting on every thing I post.
It's kinda like if Joe rented a venue for a Rally, he wouldn't want to start with a stadium full Trump fans from the rally Trump had earlier that day. He'd want to start with a clean venue that his supporters could come into.
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I'm not sure I'd WANT to start out with 18 million Trumpers commenting on every thing I post.
Have you seen Trump's twitter comments? If there's one thing clear it's that Trump doesn't have 18million Trumpers but rather 18million critics. Hell I follow the worthess shit, and I just do it for the lulz. My sister does as well. It's a great piece of comedy to sit down and check out feeds and discuss the latest boneheadded stupid thing he said.
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Really? It seems obvious to me that people who don't want to follow Biden will be reminded to unfollow him as soon as his tweet shows up in their feed. Whereas people following POTUS aren't going to instantly know they have to refollow him. So, as basic UI design, the correct default behavior - not acceptable, but correct, is to leave the people following the accounts. But more basically, the accounts are supposed to belong to the office. It's an offici
Re: I can see both ways. The majority of "Trumpers (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s why Trump personally is @realDonaldTrump and the office of the President is @potus. Itâ(TM)s irresponsible to unsubscribe people from the potus account, especially during a pandemic and handover of power.
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It's because Biden won't simply take over the account. They essentially archive the old one, then create a new one with the same name and optionally manually copy over all the followers. That way the new administration can't go back and delete everything the old one tweeted, see their DMs or otherwise investigate their use of the account.
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"That way the new administration can't go back and delete everything the old one tweeted, see their DMs or otherwise investigate their use of the account."
And how is it that it is Twitter the one to take that decision instead of the White House?
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Twitter is a private company, the White House does not own it.
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Notably, they didn't do this 4 years ago, and normally they try to keep up the facade that they treat users fairly, and as equally as possible. By comparison if a corporation is acquired, it's twitter handles are not reset; and no reset happened after the previous US election; and I can't find foreign elections that caused official account resets, so this treatmet is clearly unequal, and likely unfair (but to who?). Conversely, if this were a reasonable norm, it kind of raises questions about twitters who
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Things change, Twitter is a US-based company and that makes the US presidency more salient to them.
Policies aren't laws -- they're just designed to sort of sound neutral but fulfill executive whims. Private companies aren't government, and without regulation can't be expected to uniformly implement polic
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Trump has a personal twitter account, which he uses rather than the official POTUS account. I always found it odd they wouldn't ban Trump's account (world leader reasons) when he should have been using the POTUS account all along. That account should receive special consideration, not a personal one.
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Well, we'll see if twitter puts their nuts where their mouth is and bans @realDonaldTrump for his inevitable violations of their policies when he is no longer president.
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, what kind of person actually gives a fuck about twitter followers?
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:4, Interesting)
But seriously, what kind of person actually gives a fuck about twitter followers?
A narcissist for one [indy100.com].
In this case, the POTUS handle reaches out to millions. To now suddenly deny the same consideration they gave to the con artist smacks of duplicity and double standards. Their excuse of labeling things POTUS45, POTUS46, etc is just that. An excuse.
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:2)
Honestly I think anybody who is even paying attention to that account would simply re-follow it anyways. But this isn't like YouTube subscribers where having more means more money. Maybe if you're a business and twitter is part of your PR, then it might matter. POTUS in particular doesn't really need that though, POTUS already has about a hundred and one other means of communication with the public, with at least half of them being far more impactful than twitter.
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What other means of communication are likely as unfiltered and unmoderated? I mean, even twitter's fact-check labels are super-light-touch compared to all but the most subservient of media.
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Will be interesting to see how much they let him get away with after Biden takes over. They claim he is given leeway because he is POTUS, so presumably 5 minutes after Biden is sworn in they will be banning his personal account over his latest rant.
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Politicians, actors and musicians whose power in their industry is directly proportionate to their popularity??
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But seriously, what kind of person actually gives a fuck about twitter followers?
Twitter execs?
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:4, Informative)
But seriously, what kind of person actually gives a fuck about twitter followers?
Influencers [twitter.com] and those people who'd like to become an influencer?
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:4, Funny)
He said "person".
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:2)
Oh you mean those self-important types who expect free service from hotels and restaurants as if they have a right to it?
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Influencers are not people, they're leeches who deserve nothing but black eyes and being thrown out of every business they set foot in.
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To use an old Slashdot cliché, "I wish that I had mod points to mod this up."
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:4, Insightful)
Yay, dehumanization! It's okay to suggest doing anything to anyone you don't like, and all you have to do is say they're not human! No negative consequences have ever come from that mode of behavior!
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A thief who does not starve is less than human.
Any successful politician (Score:2)
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being able to show up in somebody's daily feed whenever you want when you're a politician is *incredibly* powerful. Most people don't think about politics much or at all.
Sure, but that just leads to the whole idea that tweets are an appropriate way to make policy. I hope your new administration will try and discourage that idea, it's kind of beneath you, and having no followers is a great place to start.
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But seriously, what kind of person actually gives a fuck about twitter followers?
Are you serious?
Anyone who wants to be able to reach, and therefore influence, large numbers of people. Anyone who is interested in being able to spread their ideas quickly and easily. That includes all politicians and journalists, and a large number of actors, academics, CEOs, etc., as well as corporate PR flacks (as corporate representatives), advertisers and many, many more.
I'm not sure how we got where we are, but Twitter is now not just a medium of discourse, it is the primary medium of public dis
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think that's discourse, then you're not reading twitter. Generally one of three things happens on twitter: A conspiracy theory is spreading, somebody is being mass shamed, or somebody is being cancelled.
Twitter is basically just a crappy pop culture magazine without an editor. Think National Inquirer, only worse.
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If you think that's discourse, then you're not reading twitter. Generally one of three things happens on twitter: A conspiracy theory is spreading, somebody is being mass shamed, or somebody is being cancelled.
If you think that's all Twitter is used for and all Twitter influences then it's clear you spend all your time reading ... twitter instead of actual news. You can claim all you want but the reality is the tweets of famous people form the on-record basis for discussions in the wider media and that extends well beyond just some nutbags debating how the CIA bombed the WTC.
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:4)
Yeah... you answered the question, more or less, about what kind of person cares about twitter followers. You failed to catch the implication that the people who do care about twitter followers are not at all the people the rest of us would like running our government.
If you're an academic or a CEO and you care about "twitter followers," you're doing your job wrong. If you're in marketing or the entertainment industry, then sure, go crazy for it. The rest of us need to leave that medium to those folks and focus on having substantive discussions again.
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If you're an academic or a CEO and you care about "twitter followers," you're doing your job wrong.
What makes you think a CEO isn't an integral part of a marketing strategy? As for academics, there's enough out there that study language and the media that Twitter forms an integral part of the job as well.
Don't be so quick to label people.
Re: Twitter was always for trump (Score:2)
They SHOULD let him say anything.
Freedom of speech and common carrier and all.
It't definitely the best way to make an idiot look like an idiot. :)
They made a massive error by acting as if they had to approve and agree with what somebody said on the platform. Because from then on, unless they said they didn't, one had to assume *they did*. ... well, dear cops, do your freakin' jobs!
If somebody says something actually criminal... (Like calling for murder, or selling meth to children)
In any other case, the pro
Re: Twitter was always for [HWN3BS] (Score:2)
Deserves positive moderation, though I'm not sure it should be considered insightful. Minor Insight would start by mentioning how Twitter follows the money.
But the big insight would have been discussing the lost opportunity for Joe Biden to reach out to the followers. That could have been a doozy of a welcome message. Can you even imagine the conspiracy theories it would have caused?
Oh yeah, the modification to the subject. I've heard the name too much. As far as possible going forward he is just "he whose
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If there was a loophole in CP laws, you just know the for-profit news media would exploit it for clicks.
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Twitter accounts have basically been flat since 2014, and only down in two quarters. You can't use that to draw conclusions.
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Lets face it. They let him say anything until finally they started losing people. They did the bare minimum and now instead of making all of those sap headed chumps unfollow Biden they are going to do it for him. They certainly didn't do that for Obama followers. Twitter loves trump.
LOL. They're going to miss him when he's out of office. Nobody gives a shit about Biden's tweets (for one thing, because everyone knows he doesn't write them. He can barely use a smartphone). Trump was entertaining. If Trump closed his Twitter account today, Twitter would lose 25% plus of their traffic tomorrow. And they know it.
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> Twitter is going to look after Twitter first. That's the responsibility of
> any corporation, self preservation. I'll believe Twitter is playing
> politics when it acts in ways that are counter to their self
> preservation.
If corporations are indeed "people", then that is wrong. They can certainly exert their will, but they have to be careful that their will breaks no laws. Break the wrong law badly enough and there is even this thing called "the death penalty", but of course we haven't seen th
Re:Twitter was always for trump (Score:5, Insightful)
If corporations are indeed "people", then that is wrong.
Corporations are people right up until the point that it no longer serves the corporation. Then the corporation morphs into what is exclusively a shareholder investment tool bound to protect shareholder's value as the single priority. It exists this way in the US because the critter-people whom the corporations own set it up this way.
Funny that the word for corporation isn't chameleon.
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Corporations are never people. They have [most of] the rights of people, but they have [almost] none of the responsibilities of same.
Rights without responsibilities always leads to ruin.
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As to corporate personhood, the concept behind it has been in use for over two thousand years. But, didn't really apply to corporations specifically until the last few hundred years. Clearly, the concept doesn't lead to ruin. As for the responsibilities part, they have responsibilities. However, those
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They should let him say anything, he's the fucking President of the United States.
The most special of snowflakes.
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Does it matter who it president? (Score:4, Insightful)
Term limits for congress now! (I'm just here for the downmodding. Give me that sweet -1 Troll)
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Re:Does it matter who it president? (Score:5, Insightful)
No! Make it a lifetime appointment to encourage people to think long and hard about who they're putting into power!
Except people don't think long and hard about who they put in power! Case in point, right now about 40% of the US population would like to see a Trumpian Monarchy installed.
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Re: Does it matter who it president? (Score:2)
40%?
That's a big number.
Got a link that would suggest 40% of the people are proposing a trump monarchy?
Because I think you're a fucking liar, is what I think.
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Which one?
Re:Does it matter who it president? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does it matter who it president? (Score:4, Insightful)
And no, 40% don't want to see a "Trumpian Monarchy",
Well they say they want democracy. But if the democracy doesn't go their way, they claim it's illegitimate. May as well be a monarchy, that's functionally the same.
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Wow- sounds/looks *EXACTLY* like what the Democrats said and did when Trump was elected and most of the time he was in office. Hillary, other Democrats, and the media said he was "illegitimate" perhaps a thousand times.
tHeYr'E jUsT aS bAd As EaCh OtHeR!
People like you are why things never get better. You are incapable of thinking of the world as anything other than "good" or "bad". Anything "bad" is functionally equal to anything else "bad". It's a very puritanical mindset, and it precludes any improvement.
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Absolutely! Now we only have like a week to confirm our next supreme court justice, so let's push this through quickly.
Re: Does it matter who it president? (Score:2)
Lol.
You must be new here. ... In this universe. :)
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That's a terrible idea (Score:2)
1. corrupt Congressmen are a dime a dozen but it's incredibly hard to replace an honest one.
2. It encourages "smash & grab" since politicians will have nothing to lose. Go read up on a lot of what the current ex-President is doing, in particular with pardons.
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Ask yourself: Whose calls will your congresscritter always take, yours, or the te
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For 2 reasons:
1. corrupt Congressmen are a dime a dozen but it's incredibly hard to replace an honest one.
2. It encourages "smash & grab" since politicians will have nothing to lose. Go read up on a lot of what the current ex-President is doing, in particular with pardons.
3. People generally get better at their jobs as they learn. Term limits mean you're losing the people who are best at governance.
4. One of the bigger problems with the US congress is that the legislators need to spend all their time fundraising, this leaves them vulnerable to lobbyists and other outside interests. Give them a few terms and a reputation they've built in their district and they're able to stand up to them.
The "term limit" idea is built around the idea that the best legislator would be some "o
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It might make sense to have some limit but its probably a lot higher than you're thinking. Aside from what others pointed out, if you have term limits that can move the power behind the scenes to non-elected party power brokers. In an ideal world your voters would hold them to account but unfortunately the USA is highly partisan.
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Term limits for congress now! (I'm just here for the downmodding. Give me that sweet -1 Troll)
This.
And if We The People were actually serious about it, we would force those we elect to create such a rule, or Amendment if needed.
Create it, or we don't vote for you. It's that simple.
And no matter what color your political pom poms, we ALL should agree that Congresscritters serving half-century terms with not even cognitive ability creating a reasonable term limit, needs to fucking end.
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Not really a big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not really a big deal for creepy Joe (Score:2, Insightful)
Joe Biden is a gaffe-o-matic [youtube.com]
Wrong approach (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not simply rename POTUS to POTUS.prev, make it read-only and create a new POTUS account? Surely it would be better to keep a "historical" record of who was following Orange Man when he was in office, and it would be just as easy.
After all, variations of that is what most people do when they want to save a particular directory in a particular state on their hard disk and start afresh.
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Or POTUS.45 ( or, if it makes it easier to search for, 45.POTUS ), that way there's a method going forward to differentiate tweets based on the president.
Re: Wrong approach (Score:5, Funny)
Looking at the unwritten rule of file names, I think you mean
POTUS.old, and later POTUS.old.old, until they all become POTUS.old.zip and then POTUS.old.zip.old, some decades later.
Re:Wrong approach (Score:5, Informative)
From the last version of this story that I read, that's basically what they plan to do.
Let the Office of the Press Secretary manage it (Score:2)
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Hopefully he'll have enough sense not to use Twitter as his PR outlet.
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If I were Biden, I'd openly not use Twitter. (Score:5, Interesting)
And talk to people on a more educated platform. If possible again, not online at all, but in person.
If people asked why, he should reply that he has no interest in keeping politings dragged down to that level. (Read: Twitter is for people like Trump.)
Because let's be honest: People want to have an actual human as their leader. Not a soundbite figure.
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Now, from your mouth to God's ears. I guess the problem, though, will be all the other Critters (both sides) who continue the discourse at the twit level and leave Biden sitting on his proverbial twitter rocking chair.
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It is illegal for the President (or anyone working in the Executive Branch, IIRC) to promote a given product whilst in office. Remember the furore when Trump endorsed that brand of beans? Use of Twitter by the President could easily be considered an endorsement of that company’s product over other similar platforms.
The best thing would be for Biden to shutter the @POTUS Twitter account and re-instate the daily press briefing.
If Twitter want to take the hit on their advertising revenue, t
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And talk to people on a more educated platform. If possible again, not online at all, but in person.
Congratulations on failing to understand the media, marketing, and communication in the 21st century.
Still showing off your ignorance as usual.
We're Gonna Hear About It (Score:3)
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Nope. The top three stories on both the NYT and the Post are "Trump Pardons; COVID Relief Bill; Latest on COVID vaccines"
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If somebody tweets and nobody follows the Twitter account does the... tree... make... I lost the analogy there somewhere.
The point is that you only have to hear about Trump bragging of more Twitter followers if you follow Trump on social media. I doubt the Jurassic media will care much what Trump has to say after inauguration day. it's quite possible conservative media will not care much either. When 'election season" comes around again for POTUS in three years Trump might be able to make some news again.
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You don't have to listen to Trump anymore.
Greed & Puppy Dogs (Score:2)
Why would anyone want to keep the followers if not out of a sheer greed of prestige and numbers? And why would an intelligent person want to have Trump's followers? They are like dumb puppy dogs. ... Wait, is this why one would want to keep them?
so what (Score:2)
I think most people followed @realDonaldTrump to see what the President has to say. Once his presidency is over, I will unfollow him. If @POTUS ends up being useful, I'll follow it, but I am very skeptical the Biden administration is savvy enough to use social media.
I joined twitter when it was clear that was how I could keep an eye on the President. Now that is likely over I probably will lose interest in the platform.
If Only Uncle Joe Would do his Own Tweets (Score:2)
With Trump, we got it raw, from him. It's very doubtful that Joe will be writing his own. Just look at it...https://twitter.com/JoeBiden It's clear that he isn't doing his own account, or we'd be reading more lines like "one horse pony"...Boring!
Re: Why bother? (Score:2)
In my mind, Americans collectively went: "Sure, we do not *actually* get to choose... But... Oh well, at least it's not Hitler!"
(With "not actually" I mean the media blackholing everything that is not the Democratic-Republican party, and the electoral college of lobbyist-politicians doing the actual voting.)
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Wrong. It is healthy to hate what is evil. Google it.
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You really seem to have missed the whole message in the summary. I have only read the summary and just from that I can tell you aren't grasping the concept of what is going to happen.
Twitter isn't deleting any Twitter accounts in this move and they aren't even blocking/deleting followers of the @POTUS account. What they are going to do is archive the current @POTUS account and then create a new @POTUS account. Four years ago they did the exact same thing when Trump became president. The only difference this