In a surprising new move Twitter has announced that the official account of Trump on Twitter will be wiped clean of millions of followers before being handed over to Biden. This is for sure an unprecedented move and one that will put the Biden administration at task to build their follower count from scratch.
It is important to note that this rule is applicable to the official @POTUS twitter account only and does not have any affect over Trump’s personal Twitter account.
But does it really matter? Not for Trump.
Trump’s official account is one of the top 100 most followed Twitter accounts in the world with almost 33 million followers. However it doesn’t even come close to the popularity held by Trump’s personal @realDonaldTrump twitter account which is the 6th most popularly followed Twitter account in the world with almost 88 million followers. Only behind Barack Obama, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna and Cristiano Ronaldo.
“In 2016, the Trump administration absorbed all of President Obama’s Twitter followers on @POTUS. In 2020, Twitter has informed us that as of right now the Biden administration will have to start from zero.” as tweeted by Rob Flaherty, Biden’s digital director.
Here are some other interesting details about this update:
- This will also mean that the upcoming first lady will have to start from scratch as @FLOTUS will also be wiped clean before hand over
- Currently Biden has almost 22 million followers on his personal Twitter account @JoeBiden which will not be affected by this move
- However Biden will have to work to completely build their follower bas from scratch
Earlier this year Twitter started labelling Trump’s tweet for mis-information and it wasn’t something that Twitter decided to do overnight. In fact the whole process took over two years.
Going forward we hope to see that Twitter will take strict action against any President of the United States or head of government of any country that posts any hateful content or mis-information.
Well for now, all we know that Biden has to do a lot of work to build his followers as soon as he takes charge of the Office.
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