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How the Presidential Transition Works in the Social Media Age
- tomdell 10y ago"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 10y agoSomeone 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).
- mkaziz 10y agoFirst Lord of the US?
- jholman 10y agoFirst Lad of the US, of course.
- Figs 10y ago> FLOTUS First Live-in-significant-other of the United States? First Longtime-companion of the United States? First Life-partner of the United States? First Lover of the United States? :P There's got to be a good gender neutral L word to insert here...
- pnathan 10y agoHmm, with all the renaming and so forth, so many links will rot. >.<
- foota 10y agoSeems like adopting ClintonWhiteHouse.gov etc (the alternative is not something I wish to ponder) from the get go would make more sense.
- ihsw 10y agoThat implies Clinton has more than a snowball's chance in hell of winning, which she doesn't.
- whateveracct 10y agoare you living in a fantasy world where polls don't matter
- ihsw 10y agoAre you living in a fantasy world where: * polls are over-sampled with pro-Clinton Democrats so badly that they aren't relevant * Clinton's popularity is so low that she can't fill the venues she campaigns at yet Trump regularly fills them to max capacity (and then some) * she makes minimal to no public appearances, instead relying on weak public figures (has-been film celebrities, entertainers) to campaign on her behalf * both current and past DNC heads have been disgraced as shills for Hillary, absolutely destroying her popularity among Sanders' Democrats and independents * scandals from the email leaks never stop going away, in fact they're getting worse * evidence of unconscionable pay-for-play continues to mount so much that they cannot be swept under the rug * the FBI investigation into her criminally negligent national security practices has been re-opened, further destroying her popularity among independents and giving an unrecoverable haircut to her loyalists * Trump has to make absolutely zero effort to retain Republican voters, nullifying all risk that they will cross the floor to the Clinton camp Because this is fantasy world is actually the reality you're willfully ignoring.
- ChrisClark 10y agoWow, you really are. I'm so, so sorry.
- cryptoz 10y ago> 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.
- MichaelBurge 10y agoI think the White House can get someone at Twitter to copy anything they need over.
- cryptoz 10y agoOkay, so, what will this link do? https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/786254141182074880 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/786254141182074880 Will it go to a page that says deleted? Is that what "no tweets on the timeline" means? Will each tweet link redirect to the copy?
- privong 10y ago> Okay, so, what will this link do? > https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/786254141182074880 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/786254141182074880 > Will it go to a page that says deleted? Is that what "no tweets on the timeline" means? Will each tweet link redirect to the copy? I think the only important part of the URL is the ID number at the end. So, no matter what the username is changed to, as long as you have that unique numeric ID, it will go to the correct place. You can check this by changing the "POTUS" string to anything else you like, and sending your browser to that modified URL: https://twitter.com/POTUS44/status/786254141182074880 https://twitter.com/POTUS44/status/786254141182074880 Presently, the above URL redirects to the POTUS one you posted, but that just goes to show that the numeric ID is the important identifier.
- dopeboy 10y agoI 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.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoWhat was the name of the internal staffing tool?
- rebootthesystem 10y agoI 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 10y agoDo 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 10y agoWell, 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-in-transition-gao-finds.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/us/white-house-vandalized-... 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.
- vonzeppelin 10y agoI 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 10y agoMaybe so people can't claim the new president said something they didn't? When you change avatar and name, old tweets update their design.
- epc 10y agoThe records created by a given Presidential administration are controlled by that administration, even after it's in office. It's unlikely that Twitter or most internet services have a notion of an identity being passed from one administration to the next, preventing the "new" administration from changing or deleting the records created by the previous administration.
- adamdecaf 10y agoWhat'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 - ...
- hossbeast 10y agoFacebook.com/ObamaWhiteHouse is a naming collision waiting to happen (president Michelle?) Go with Facebook.com/whitehouse44
- Mao_Zedang 10y agoWhen twitter staff are handing over the @potus handle to Trump it will be a sombre moment for them all, that and their lay offs and stock price, can twitter really take another hit to their internal culture. I almost fill sorry for them, they tried their best to manipulate the election.
- clamprecht 10y agoIn Argentina, the previous president (Cristina Kirchner) refused to give up the twitter account @CasaRosadaAR. http://www.latintimes.com/pulse/cristina-fernandez-de-kirchner-refused-give-twitter-account-new-argentine-president-361467 http://www.latintimes.com/pulse/cristina-fernandez-de-kirchn...
- quantumpotato_ 10y agoHi 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.
- bennettfeely 10y agoEveryone 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 10y agoOne for official business, one for bringing the bantz and keeping the feud with Rosie going.
- stephenr 10y agoIn a hypothetical situation where Donald Trump is elected President of the United States, your concern is: > Is @realDonaldTrump really going to give up tweeting from his account
- syngrog66 10y agowait 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 10y agoLast 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 10y agoHillary never deleted anything after she learned of the investigation. Her lawyers were given specific instructions and they followed them.
- justavoice 10y agoNope, she used a wipe cloth... And had her IT guy use bleach to clean it. Nothing to see here...
- elcapitan 10y agoBesides 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.
- rahkiin 10y agoThe 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 10y agoI'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