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After President Donald Trump officially took office on Monday, many Meta users were confused and alarmed when they discovered their Facebook and Instagram accounts had automatically followed the new POTUS, JD Vance, First Lady Melania Trump, and other accounts related to the new administration.
This led many to believe that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, Inc., forced the auto-follow on its users, especially after CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to shift toward right-wing views. Meta Communications Director Andy Stone immediately dispelled the speculations via social media, explaining that the changes users noticed were part of a transition phase. Stone wrote that users were “not made to automatically follow” the accounts, adding that they are managed by the White House and the content of the Pages changes when a new administration enters office.
“This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition. It may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands.”
The fact-checking site Snopes also investigated the issue and clarified what happened, reporting that Meta did not impose the follows on its users. Instead, those users were already following the official @POTUS and @VicePresident accounts on Facebook, which formerly belonged to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Prior to the inauguration, Trump’s and Vance’s handles were @DonaldTrump and @JD-Vance.
Some users can’t use the unfollow button
A former Facebook employee, Katie Harbath, validated Stone’s explanation, saying that her team set up the transition back in 2016 from Barack Obama to Trump, and the same process was done from Trump to Biden. “The old ones go to an archived account and the followers remain, but the feed is wiped clean. Most platforms handle it this way,” she explained. Snopes also reached out to Harbath, and she explained via email that the new administration’s Pages, without the official handles, are created before the inauguration, and the handles are added on Inauguration Day. The old administrations’s Pages are then archived.
Still, some users commented that they don’t believe the explanation as they have never followed the @POTUS account to begin with. Singers Gracie Abrams and Demi Lovato also called out Meta, stating they couldn’t unfollow Trump and Vance on Instagram. Abrams posted an Instagram Story sharing to her followers that she had to unfollow the President and Vice President accounts on Instagram three times because Meta “kept automatically refollowing the accounts.” Lovato also posted a Story explaining that she’s had to unfollow Vance twice, adding, “Shady f**king business meta.”
Furthermore, Instagram users also raised concerns about not being able to search #democrat on the platform. Stone addressed the problem as well, explaining that there was an error in the search function that was preventing users from searching for “a number of different hashtags” and not just “those on the left.” Despite the clarification, many users believe that something more sinister is going on, with one user pointing out that it was funny how the problem “conveniently” occurred right after Trump’s inauguration, adding, “The problem affected #democrats and not #republicans, eh?”
These issues are leading many people to wonder whether it has something to do with Zuckerberg and the recent changes to Meta, including the CEO’s decision to remove the fact-checking system on the social media platforms, a policy that Trump and other conservatives heavily criticized.