Keys to the White House and access to nuclear launch codes aren't the only things President-elect Joe Biden will gain on Jan. 20. Twitter and Facebook will hand over control of the @POTUS accounts to the Biden Administration on Inauguration Day.
Team Trump will be forced to cede position-specific handles like @POTUS, @FLOTUS, and @VP to the incoming troupe: Joe Biden, Jill Biden, and Kamala Harris, respectively. The same goes for @WhiteHouse. It's unclear whether Biden & Co. will use the appointed accounts, or continue posting primarily from their personal pages—as Donald Trump chose to.
"Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on Jan. 20, 2021," a company spokesperson told Politico. "As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records."
According to the news site, the handover requires no sharing of information; all existing tweets will be archived (presumably via a new @POTUS45 handle) and the accounts wiped clean—a tradition that began when Barack Obama left office nearly four years ago.
Donal Trump is no stranger to social media. Known best for his uninhibited tweets, the current Commander in Chief also regularly shares photos and videos on Instagram, where his personal account boasts more than 24 million followers. The official POTUS Facebook page, meanwhile, hasn't been touched in more than two years.
"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 Jan. 20, and we expect to do the same here," Facebook said in a statement published by Reuters.
Neither Twitter nor Facebook immediately responded to PCMag's request for comment.