Meta denies 'forcing' people to follow Donald Trump and JD Vance on social media apps
Some have claimed their accounts have automatically been made to follow the new US leaders, while others have said they are not being allowed to unfollow them.
Thursday 23 January 2025 16:46, UK
Facebook owner Meta has denied claims from some users that they have been "forced" to follow social media accounts belonging to the Trump administration.
Users on Facebook and Instagram have claimed they found they were "automatically" following the official accounts of Donald Trump and JD Vance following their inauguration on Monday.
The claims come after Mark Zuckerberg's Meta made a number of policy changes to its social media apps which better aligned them with the Trump administration.
But Meta has denied it forced anyone to follow the accounts, and highlighted that the president and vice president's accounts are linked to the US offices rather than the individual, meaning supporters who followed those accounts for the previous president and vice president still do so despite Mr Trump and Mr Vance taking them over from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Some users had made further claims that they were being forced to follow the accounts, and had been unable to unfollow them when trying to do so.
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Singer Gracie Abrams, in a post to her Instagram Stories, said she had to "unfollow @vp and @potus three separate times today because Meta kept automatically refollowing the accounts".
She added: "How curious! Had to block them in order to make sure I am nowhere near that."
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In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said: "People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the president, vice president or first lady.
"Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those pages changes.
"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."