You Can Follow Trump on Social Media Without Even Wanting To.
In the two days since Donald Trump was sworn in, you may have noticed something strange on social media: You and your friends may be following Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, First Lady Melania Trump and the Trump White House on Instagram and Facebook. , despite never following these three before. The question arises: did Meta automatically follow these accounts on your behalf?
Instagram Doesn’t Necessarily Make You Follow Trump
According to Mehta, the answer is no. The company cites a post on Threads by Meta Communications spokesman Andy Stone, who says: “Reminder: The Facebook.com/POTUS and Facebook.com/White… accounts are operated by the White House. They change when the owner changes in the White House.” Cosmopolitan received another statement from Meta , which said: “People were not automatically forced to follow any official Facebook or Instagram accounts of the President, Vice President or First Lady… These accounts are managed by the White House, so with the new administration, the contents of these pages changes. This is the same procedure we used during the last presidential transition. Subscribe and unsubscribe requests may take some time to process as these accounts change hands.”
The explanation makes some sense: if an account, like the presidency itself, represents more than just its current owner, then users who follow the official POTUS, VPOTUS, and FLOTUS accounts are actually following who is president, vice president and first lady of the time. In fact, that’s what happened last time: This CNN article from January 2021 talks about how most social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube, have moved their POTUS, VPOTUS and FLOTUS accounts (and their subscribers) to the new Biden administration. At the time, Twitter was the only network that chose not to automatically transfer followers, but instead shared warnings with users on how to follow new accounts.
Some users point to the fact that Meta itself seems to suggest that these accounts are completely new. If you look at the president’s official account (not Trump’s personal account, mind you), Instagram says the “joining date” was January 2025. (The verification date is exactly the same.) This adds to user confusion: Meta says these accounts are created and changed with the current holder of the position, but also that Trump’s POTUS account was created this month. However, if you look at President Biden’s archived account, it shows a connection and verification date of January 2021, suggesting that Biden’s account was also opened when he took office.
Meta’s political problems
In my opinion, the problem is more about misunderstanding, polarization and existing dissatisfaction among users with the platform. The meta was supposed to make it clear to users that they were not following the politicians themselves, but an account that would change when the politicians did. If you are not interested in following the new president or vice president, you should not feel forced to do so.
And this brings me to the larger point: Meta is simply setting itself up to appear very sympathetic to the new Trump administration. After all, Mark Zuckerberg was one of the tech giants in attendance at the inauguration, so when his platform seemingly follows the new president, vice president and first lady on behalf of its users – whether that’s true or not – it plays on that idea. . This comes at the same time that the company is openly moving to the right in its politics and accepting politics in general more than ever. Earlier this year, Instagram and Threads did a 180 by making it the default to add political content to the feeds of accounts that users don’t follow. At the same time , Meta also abandoned its policies regarding fact-checking and hate speech on its platforms.
Meta has alienated a significant portion of its user base in recent months, so when those users open their apps and see that they are now following policies that the company appears to be biased toward (policies that those users may strongly disagree with), this creates a situation similar to what we see today, with headlines abuzz about Meta forcing users to follow Trump, Vance, Melania and the Trump White House. Just look through the comments on the POTUS, VPOTUS, and White House accounts to see how unhappy many users are about being followed. (FLOTUS has no messages at this time.)
You may have to wait to unfollow these accounts.
Unfortunately, unfollowing these accounts may not be as simple as clicking “unfollow.” According to Andy Stone , unfollow requests can take a while to process, meaning any combination of these three items could get stuck in your feed.
On the other hand, if you followed the previous administration on any of these three accounts, you will still follow their archived accounts as well. Once archived, you won’t see new posts from these accounts, so the choice is yours whether to stay subscribed or not.