Fact check: Facebook did not remove 'President-elect' from Joe Biden's page

McKenzie Sadeghi, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Facebook removed Biden's 'president elect' title from his page

In an attempt to support the claim that President Donald Trump is going to win the 2020 election, some of his supporters have taken to social media to claim that Facebook has removed the title 'President-elect" from Joe Biden's Facebook page.

"FACEBOOK TAKES 'PRESIDENT ELECT' OFF OF BIDENS FB PAGE AFTER TRUMPS ATTORNEY SIDNEY POWELL COMFIRMS RAID ON DOMINION VOTING SERVER IN GERMANY," reads a Nov. 21 Facebook post. "Now why would FB do that? LOL! TRUMP IS GOING TO WIN!"

Along with the text is an image of Joe Biden's Facebook page that lists him as "Senator, Vice President, 2020 candidate for President of the United States, husband to Jill."

That and other Facebook posts followed a viral tweet from Chuck Callesto, who unsuccessfully ran as a Republican congressional candidate in Florida.

"BREAKING REPORT: Facebook REMOVES title of PRESIDENT ELECT from Joe Biden's page and identifies Biden as POLITICIAN," Callesto tweeted, which has now been shared by users on Facebook as a screenshot.

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook users and Callesto for comment.

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Biden's page never said 'President Elect'

A search on the Internet Archives Wayback Machine, a nonprofit digital library, shows that on May 7, shortly after Biden announced his 2020 run for president, Biden's Facebook page title said "Politician."

That title held until Nov. 7, the day that news organizations projected Biden as the president-elect, after he secured key wins in battleground states. As of Nov. 27, the Biden Facebook page still categorizes him as "Politician."

A Facebook spokesperson has previously confirmed to USA TODAY that page administrators select the designation, not Facebook.

A similar claim has previously appeared alleging that Facebook removed Trump's title of "President" and downgraded it to "Political Candidate." USA TODAY debunked this and found that Trump was listed as "Political Candidate" both before and after the 2016 election.

Biden's page transparency section states that "BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT" is responsible for the page and it was created on Dec. 13, 2007.

Other searches on the Wayback Machine show that Biden's Facebook page has said "Politician" until at least November 2018. Archives of the page taken in the weeks since Biden was projected president-elect further show that the page never said "president-elect."

Facebook and Twitter will hand over the @POTUS account, the official account of the president of the United States, as well as other institutional handles, on Jan. 20, according to Reuters.

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Our rating: False

The claim that Facebook removed a "President-elect" title from Biden's official Facebook page is FALSE based on our research. A search of archives of the Biden Facebook page show that it has listed him as "Politician" ever since he was projected president-elect. A Facebook spokesperson has also previously confirmed that page administrators and not the platform are in charge of the designation.

Our fact-check sources:

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Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Facebook didn't remove 'President-elect' on Joe Biden page

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