
How the Presidential Transition Works in the Social Media Age - ctingom
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/10/31/digital-transition-how-presidential-transition-works-social-media-age
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cryptoz
> The account will retain its more than 11 million followers, but start with
> no tweets on the timeline. @POTUS44, a newly created handle maintained by
> NARA, will contain all of President Obama’s tweets and will be accessible to
> the public on Twitter as an archive of President Obama’s use of the account.

Wait, how are they planning on doing this? Will this copy retain the
timestamps and other metadata of the original tweets? I don't understand how
this will work.

Edit: The more I think about this the more confusing it sounds. Will the
tweets be deleted? Will all the links break? This seems like a very messy way
of handling the transition, unless I'm misunderstanding how it will work.

~~~
Natsu
If I understand correctly, Bill could end up with @FLOTUS?

~~~
bitwize
Bill would be styled "First Gentleman", so FGOTUS?

~~~
BBlarat
Is he a member of the Gentry?[1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentry)

~~~
MBlume
Well, neither have most previous first ladies been 'ladies' in that sense.

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dopeboy
I used to work at the White House in the Presidential Personnel Office where I
worked on an internal staffing tool to help fill political appointed positions
across government. As we poured hours and contracting dollars into, we
wondered aloud many times whether our work would go on into the next
administration. The tool and the workflow behind it is pretty standard so
there shouldn't be any reason why not. The general consensus was that if the
next administration is a Democratic one, our work had a chance of staying
alive.

One thing not mentioned in the article - everything archived by NARA ends up
going to Obama's official library. I'm curious if and how they're going to
make that accessible to the public.

~~~
rebootthesystem
I worry about polarization to such an extent that administration N might spend
millions of dollars to develop tools useful for the running of the nation and,
upon transition, these tools are negated to administration M almost purely on
an ideological bases.

In other words, we are not supposed to be developing software and tools at the
White House, or anywhere else, to support a particular political party but
rather in support of our nation.

Not saying this is what you have done. I just have a sense that if Trump wins
those not sympathetic with the right might cripple the infrastructure that was
developed or let it rot and become useless. This isn't good for anyone.

~~~
harryh
Do you have any evidence to support your worry? It seems to me that it's
mostly unfounded. Nothing like what you describe has ever happened in the
past.

~~~
imron
Well, there was that time when the outgoing administration removed the 'W'
keys from many of the keyboards and did other damage.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/us/white-house-
vandalized-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/us/white-house-vandalized-
in-transition-gao-finds.html)

Given the animosity of the Democrats towards Trump, if Trump wins, I would say
there is a non-zero chance that some petty vandalism will also likely occur.

~~~
mirimir
Maybe the Ws were just mementos. I wonder whether any of them have shown up on
eBay.

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adamdecaf
What's the plan for the 47th+ Presidents?

\- [https://twitter.com/potus46](https://twitter.com/potus46)

\- [https://twitter.com/potus47](https://twitter.com/potus47)

\- [https://twitter.com/potus48](https://twitter.com/potus48)

\- [https://twitter.com/potus49](https://twitter.com/potus49)

\- [https://twitter.com/potus50](https://twitter.com/potus50)

\- ...

~~~
ceejayoz
Twitter has yanked names on behalf of celebrities in the past.

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tomdell
"the handle @POTUS will be made available to the 45th President of the United
States on January 20, 2017... This will also be the case for other Twitter
handles, including... @FLOTUS..."

So if Hillary Clinton wins, they're planning on scrubbing the FLOTUS handle's
tweets and giving the account to Bill Clinton without a name change?

~~~
schoen
Someone else seems to have registered
[https://twitter.com/FGOTUS](https://twitter.com/FGOTUS) (but judging from the
content of the tweets there, might be quite happy to turn it over to the
administration in that case).

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clamprecht
In Argentina, the previous president (Cristina Kirchner) refused to give up
the twitter account @CasaRosadaAR.

[http://www.latintimes.com/pulse/cristina-fernandez-de-
kirchn...](http://www.latintimes.com/pulse/cristina-fernandez-de-kirchner-
refused-give-twitter-account-new-argentine-president-361467)

------
quantumpotato_
Hi I want to point out that a while back "Barack Obama" created a github
account.. press releases went out "Obama learns to code" ... but then the
github account went down and was replaced by a similarly named one like
presidentobama_bot or something like that. Sorry I don't remember the exact
string but it was odd.

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vonzeppelin
I don't understand the why of this transition. Why does it need to be moved to
a new account? Why can't it all just stay on the same account?

~~~
Swizec
Maybe so people can't claim the new president said something they didn't? When
you change avatar and name, old tweets update their design.

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elcapitan
Besides the @POTUS handle, there will also be a @realPOTUS representing
whoever thinks he or she is supposedly the real president but the election was
rigged.

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bennettfeely
Everyone here is talking about what is going to happen if Hillary is elected.

Is @realDonaldTrump really going to give up tweeting from his account if
elected? I'd be surprised.

~~~
R_haterade
One for official business, one for bringing the bantz and keeping the feud
with Rosie going.

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rahkiin
The page says it will archive Obama's snapchats. Now, I thought the #1 feature
of SnapChat was that they are deleted afterwards. So how does that work? Did
Obama screenshot every SnapChat he made?

~~~
skinnymuch
I'm guessing you've never used Snapchat before? You can save your own Snaps
before sending them out. So that's prob what has been happening.

Also Snapchat has a permanent Memories feature now

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hossbeast
Facebook.com/ObamaWhiteHouse is a naming collision waiting to happen
(president Michelle?)

Go with Facebook.com/whitehouse44

~~~
MrZongle2
_Any_ kind of political dynasty -- whether it be Kennedys, Obamas or Bushes --
should give voters pause. I don't understand the infatuation with neo-royalty.

~~~
hossbeast
Sure, what does that have to do with the technical mistake of failing to plan
for naming collisions?

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pnathan
Hmm, with all the renaming and so forth, so many links will rot. >.<

~~~
foota
Seems like adopting ClintonWhiteHouse.gov etc (the alternative is not
something I wish to ponder) from the get go would make more sense.

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syngrog66
wait a minute... the President is communicating on a _private server account_?
not via a "secure" government server? someone tell Comey quick so he can write
another letter to Congress revealing this madness. We still have a week left.

I wonder if any other government employees are too. I wonder if any are
passing classified info thru them, especially in DM's.

~~~
umanwizard
Last I checked Obama never sent and received classified information through
his Twitter account, nor deleted anything from his Twitter account after
learning it would likely be investigated.

~~~
odonnellryan
Hillary never deleted anything after she learned of the investigation.

Her lawyers were given specific instructions and they followed them.

