Betsy DeVos’ Twitter Popularity Is Upside-Down.
US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is well on her way to becoming the most unpopular secretary of education since the office was established in its own right in 1979, and that is saying a lot given that American public education had to put up with seven years of Arne Duncan.
In the days after her February 07, 2017, Pence-tiebreaking, Senate confirmation, DeVos informed her Twitter followers in her 35th tweet since June 2012 that she would no longer be using her @BetsyDeVos twitter account and would instead “keep the conversation going” on her “official channel,” @BetsyDeVosED:
On February 16, 2017, DeVos’ posted only one more tweet @BetsyDeVos, and it is the only one cross-posted @BetsyDeVosED:
Despite DeVos’ attempts to redirect the public to her new, official Twitter account, here is what is remarkable-sad about DeVos’ switch from @BetsyDeVos to @BetsyDeVosED:
DeVos’ defunct Twitter account has over twice the number of followers as does her official, current, US ed sec account:
- @BetsyDeVos: 146K followers
- @BetsyDeVosED: 63K followers
Bizarre.
An archived snapshot of @BetsyDeVos from February 15, 2017 (the day she posted her tweet redirecting followers to @BetsyDeVosED) has DeVos’ Twitter followers at 132K.
Additional archived snapshots of @BetsyDeVos (DeVos’ defunct account) have DeVos’ followers at these counts:
- February 24, 2017: 138K
- March 03, 2017: 141K
- March 30, 2017: 146K
- April 14, 2017: 147K
- September 23, 2017: 146K
Meanwhile, archived snapshots of @BetsyDeVosED (DeVos’ official, active account) yield these counts:
- February 23, 2017: 22.3K
- March 03, 2017: 28.3K
- March 30, 2017: 36.8K
- April 15, 2017: 40.5K
- May 14, 2017: 46K
- July 09, 2017: 52.7K
- August 21, 2017: 56.9K
- September 28, 2017: 62.6K
It seems that DeVos has accrued Twitter followers who are not noticing that @BetsyDeVos has not posted a single tweet in over six months. Moreover, it is not as though people are choosing to follow DeVos’ official account without discontinuing her defunct account; in such a case, one would expect the number of followers on both accounts to be closer– or, if one account has more followers, one would expect it to be DeVos’ active, official account.
One would also expect a federal secretary of education to actually support the traditional public schools upon which our country is built, but that is not happening in DeVos’ case, either. She prefers sending public money to private schools, out of the purview of the public. This she peddles as parental empowerment.
Over twice as many Twitter users prefer to follow a Betsy DeVos who has stopped tweeting her school privatization agenda than the official, US ed sec Betsy DeVos who continues to push for it.
Indeed, DeVos’ upside-down, Twitter-follower issue is bizarre– but no more so than her very presence as a US secretary of education.
Betsy DeVos
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Want to read about the history of charter schools and vouchers?
School Choice: The End of Public Education?
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Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of two other books: A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education and Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?. You should buy these books. They’re great. No, really.
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