Liberal Facebook and Instagram users were outraged after the inauguration when they discovered they were automatically following the accounts of President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, with the platforms forcing Americans to follow their profiles. It falsely claimed that following was being forced as “part of a propaganda machine.”
The left-handed account owner was stunned when a post from the nation's newly sworn leader appeared on his feed, even though neither Trump nor Vance had ever hit the follow button.
Some alarmists believed this supposed auto-follow was the Trump administration's first step in stripping the Meta-owned social media platform of its autonomy. Much of the anxiety was amplified by the fact that multiple social media chiefs, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were sitting at the center of President Trump's inauguration.
“Wait, did Facebook auto-follow all the new American admins?? I didn’t follow any of these pages, and I barely used Facebook, but they all showed up at the top of my feed. , and when I clicked on it, it said I was following you??,” one user wrote to X.
“Not only are Instagram forcing accounts to auto-follow VP, they are effectively buying or stealing Kamala's entire following list. They have exactly the same number of followers and I don't follow them. All the same people follow both accounts. No one I know wants to follow him,” another added.
“Believe it or not, I just realized today that I was following an account I never followed. Auto-following is part of the social media propaganda machine. ) Must check the subsequent fights daily,” a third user wrote.
But panicked social media users were simply following official U.S. government accounts — as others have pointed out, there's a new administration in the White House to quell growing alarm. Accounts change every time.
“I'm not saying Meta is stopping doing sketchy things, but this is not an 'auto-follow' in that sense, and the official VP Instagram switched from Harris to Vance and kept his current followers.” . The POTUS account has also switched and I think Vance just pops up with a particularly unpleasant look on his face,” one X user wrote.
All official government accounts, including the social media profiles of the president, vice president, and first lady, are controlled by the White House and whichever administration is in power.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone explained in a thread that the account always “changes as the occupants of the White House change.”
After its inauguration, all posts from the previous administration were archived, making it appear as if the account had started anew. However, the account itself will not be deleted, and since it is the same account, the number of followers will remain the same.
As of Tuesday morning, former President Joe Biden's archived POTUS account on Facebook had 11 million followers, which matched President Trump's new POTUS account on the platform.
As a result, many supporters of the Biden administration found themselves unintentionally following Trump on Monday.
All users are free to continue following or unfollow an account by clicking the ellipsis on the profile page and clicking “Unfollow.”
with post wire
