WASHINGTON — It’s a social media user’s worst nightmare: Wake up to find most of your followers gone.
But that’s exactly what happened to the official presidential accounts on social media X Monday.
The @WhiteHouse, @VP, @FLOTUS and @POTUS were reset to reflect the new administration of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. (POTUS is the official acronym for President of the United States; FLOTUS refers to the First Lady.)
Four years ago these social media handles were transferred from Trump to Biden — now they’re being handed back over.
While Trump still uses @realDonaldTrump, after once being banned from the app when it was still officially called Twitter, he posted for the first time on the @POTUS account shortly after his inauguration.
“AMERICA IS BACK. Every single day I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body. I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America.”
AMERICA IS BACK. 🇺🇸Every single day I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body. I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America. pic.twitter.com/cCuSV8Q44Z
— President Donald J. Trump (@POTUS) January 20, 2025
Following what the social media giant did in 2021, these accounts completely reset, losing all followers and previous tweets as an archive is made of the previous presidents account. Despite this, Trump had hundreds of thousands of followers by lunchtime after the inauguration.
These institutional accounts don’t belong any particular individual — they’re reserved for official government use by those in the current administration.
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As for Biden’s @POTUS account? It will be archived as @POTUS46Archive, just as Trump’s first administration’s account was archived as @POTUS45.
Facebook, meanwhile, is sticking to its previous policy of “duplicating” all 5.5 million followers of the official White House Facebook and Instagram accounts to the new administration. Biden’s POTUS and related accounts will be archived, similarly to X.
The White House social media accounts, and website, also transferred when Trump was sworn in a president. The White House X page, @WhiteHouse, had a new bio and background image just after noon on Monday reading “The Golden Age of America Begins Right Now” and “America is BACK.”