To be honest, I’ve been wondering about the question in the headline for a while now. And on Monday, in a blog post, the White House kindly decided to answer. But the thing I don’t think I’d paid adequate attention to until I read that blog post is the fact that, President Barack Obama being the first “social media president,” his administration is actually creating this new kind of transition protocol.
The Man of Steel meets with the Commander-in-Chief. 🎃 pic.twitter.com/DCqRPXutHt
— White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) November 1, 2016
That’s pretty cool — so how will it all work?
Essentially, all general presidential or White House-related handles and accounts will be scrubbed and turned over to the next administration. This goes for the likes on @POTUS, @FLOTUS and @WhiteHouse on Twitter, as well as Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat (!) accounts.
POTUS being POTUS, though, all of the content tweeted or facebooked or instagrammed or snapped from the accounts will be saved as a matter of public record. Thus all of the content will be transitioned to newly created accounts (@POTUS44, for example) and maintained by the National Archives. White House staff accounts, like @DJ44, will also be archived.
Along the same lines, Obama’s WhiteHouse.gov will be frozen and preserved at ObamaWhiteHouse.gov, and first domain will be made available for the incoming administration. This piece of the digital transition has been done before, after both the Clinton and Bush terms.
In addition to all this, the Obama administration is committing to opening up all social media data to “folks who are interested in building something for the public.” Sound like you? Submit a project idea here.
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