Meta on Wednesday refuted claims that its platform forced users to automatically follow President Trump and Vice President Vance's Instagram accounts on Inauguration Day.
Shortly after Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance were sworn into office, some users posted online claiming that their Instagram and Facebook accounts automatically followed Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance. Some people claimed they didn't follow the account and asked Meta to explain what happened.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said Wednesday that users are “not designed to automatically follow” the official accounts of Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance, and first lady Melania Trump.
“These accounts are controlled by the White House, so any new administration will change the content of these pages.” he wrote in the thread. “This is the same procedure we took during the last presidential transition.”
Some users still claimed they never followed former President Biden or former Vice President Harris in the first place, while others said they tried to unfollow the accounts but the platform wouldn't allow them.
Stone said it “may take some time” for follow and unfollow requests to be fully processed during the transition process.
Facebook and Instagram's parent company faced additional scrutiny earlier this week after some users reported that they were getting a “no results” message when searching for the terms “Democrat” or “Democratic Party.”
Stone said Tuesday that the issue is not limited to just those two terms.
“Instagram is experiencing an issue that is impacting people's ability to search for a variety of hashtags, not just left-wing ones. We are working quickly to resolve this issue,” Stone said. he said. I wrote it in the thread.
The scrutiny follows a tumultuous few weeks in which Meta came under political scrutiny after it scrapped its fact-checking program earlier this month.
At the time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company's platform would rely on a community notes system, in what he called an effort to embrace free speech.
Days later, Meta announced internal actions to reduce the company's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team and roll back several related programs.
Some Democrats were quick to accuse Mr. Zuckerberg of capitulating to Mr. Trump ahead of Inauguration Day.
Mr. Zuckerberg was one of the many technology leaders who attended President Trump's inauguration, and Mr. Mehta donated $1 million to the president's inaugural fund.
