The US has just witnessed a change of power and a Twitter transfer of @POTUS.
As Joe Biden became US president, the social media company switched over the linked account to the new administration. In normal times, it would be a trivial detail, but Donald Trump so amplified the importance of the service as his mouthpiece, it sometimes felt like rule by tweet.
That might justify the need for a clean sheet and explain why, unlike four years ago, when President Trump took over the handle, Joe Biden isn’t automatically keeping the account’s current followers.
The Washington Post explains its 33m followers will get a notification about the transfer with the option to follow Biden’s President Of The United States account if they wish. Twitter did not explain why it was introducing an opt-in policy, which Joe Biden’s digital director Rob Flaherty complained was a break with 2017 protocol, before admitting:
“Anyway, the nice thing about Joe Biden is that he truly…