The White House started posting on Reddit to talk about Hurricane Milton

Reddit isn’t the first place you’d think to see official statements and news coming from the federal government, but today, The White House is on the site making posts. You’ll often see staffers posting on social media platforms like Instagram and X to announce updates and reach a larger audience, so this feels new. The Biden administration’s “whitehouse” account has new posts in subreddits r/NorthCarolina and r/Georgia to discuss the federal response to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.

“Yep, it’s really us!” the White House account says in one of the threads. Usually, that’s not an entirely convincing way to prove your identity, but Reddit’s Gina Antonini tells The Verge in an email that it is indeed a legitimate account. Antonini also says the White House account has an “Official” badge as part of the Reddit Pro program.

Whether it’s a brand-new account is a mystery, as the account’s creation day (or cake day, as Reddit calls it) is January 7th, 2021. The White House did not respond to whether it has used the account before.

The White House’s deputy of platforms director, Megan Coyne, posted on X saying the account was launched today.

One of the posts from The White House on r/Georgia was deleted by mods for violating the subreddit’s specific rules about post titles matching headlines, but the post has been reinstated. “Who tf really thought the govt would start a Reddit account?” wrote a mod.

Update, October 8th: Added that the post in r/Georgia was reinstated and that the account has an “Official” badge.