Several netizens raised an issue about their Meta accounts automatically following either US President Donald Trump or his Vice President JD Vance on social media this week, said reports. Meta spokesman Andy Stone denied the claim and in response, stated that the official accounts including that of POTUS were managed by the White House during the transition it may take some time to settle in the changes.
According to Associated Press report, this automatic follow may have happened because those users were previously following official US government accounts.
What Did Meta Spokesperson Say?
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a Threads post that the official POTUS and White House accounts are managed by the White House and "change when the occupant of the White House changes".
The same goes for accounts for the US vice president and first lady.
BBC quoted Stone saying, "This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition."
He reportedly added that this "may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands".
After the new president is sworn in, Facebook and Instagram accounts of the previous administration are archived and the posts, as well as followers, are preserved.
These followers are then transferred to the new official accounts.
As of Tuesday morning, Joe Biden's archived POTUS account had 11 million followers on Facebook, as did Trump's official POTUS account.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attended Trump's inauguration ceremony at Capitol Rotunda on January 20.
After Donald Trump won the election in early November, Mark Zuckerberg had dinner with him at his Mar-a-Lago home and reportedly donated $1 million USD towards his inauguration celebration.
If one finds their Facebook or Instagram accounts following any pages that they did not plan to follow, they can simple manually unfollow.
To unfollow an account one doesn't want to follow, one can click the ellipsis on the profile page and click "unfollow" or "block".
