Rob Flaherty, the digital director for US President-elect Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, revealed on Tuesday that Twitter had told the team it would be resetting the follower lists on all White House-linked Twitter accounts.
The Biden team official later remarked in a follow-up tweet that the campaign had fought against the idea of wiping the follower lists, but was informed that the move “was unequivocal.”
The revelation was later confirmed by the Wall Street Journal’s Emily Glazer, who explained that the affected accounts would include the White House, POTUS and VP Twitter accounts, among others. Twitter also indicated that followers of the current accounts will be notified and given the choice to follow the new Biden accounts.
The three aforementioned accounts currently have nearly 70 million followers collectively, about 19 million fewer than Trump has on his personal Twitter account, which he has frequently used instead of the official White House accounts.
Twitter’s updated policy is a complete change from the steps taken during the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump administration, when the company simply allowed the follower lists to be absorbed by the incoming officials.
When Twitter was contacted about Flaherty’s remarks, spokesperson Nick Pacilio remarked that the company has been in “ongoing discussions with the Biden transition team on a number of aspects related to White house account transfers.”
