In the two days since Donald Trump took office, you may have noticed something strange on social media: You and your friends may be following Trump, Vice President JD Vance, First Lady Melania Trump, and the Trump White House on Instagram and Facebook, even though he’s following these three people have never followed before. The question arises: Did Meta automatically track these accounts on your behalf?
Instagram doesn’t necessarily force you to follow Trump
According to Meta, the answer is no. The company refers to branches a post on threads from meta communications speaker Andy Stone, who says: “A reminder: the Facebook.com/POTUS And Facebook.com/White… The accounts are managed by the White House. They change as the occupant of the White House changes.” Cosmopolitan received further comment from MetaIt says: “People have not been forced to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts of the President, Vice President or First Lady… These accounts are managed by the White House, therefore the content of these accounts will be controlled under a new administration changed.” This is the same process we used during the last presidential transition. It may take time to process follow and unfollow requests when these accounts change hands.
The explanation makes some sense: If the account, like the presidency itself, is more than just its current owner, then users who follow the official POTUS, VPOTUS, and FLOTUS accounts are actually following whoever happens to be president, vice president and first is queen then. This is exactly what happened last time: This CNN article from January 2021 talks about how most social media platforms – including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube – have transferred their POTUS, VPOTUS and FLOTUS accounts (and their followers) to the incoming Biden administration. At the time, Twitter was the only network that decided not to automatically transfer followers, but instead pushed notifications to users about how to follow the new accounts.
Some users point out that Meta itself seems to indicate that these accounts are brand new. If you look at the president’s official account (not Trump’s personal account, mind you), Instagram says the “join date” was January 2025. (The verification date is exactly the same.) This adds to user confusion: Meta says these accounts are set up with the current incumbent and change, but also that Trump’s POTUS account was created this month. However, if you look at President Biden’s archived account, it says that the sign-up and verification date was January 2021, which suggests that the Biden account was also opened when he took power.
In my opinion, the problem lies more in miscommunication, polarization and users’ existing complaints about the platform. Meta should have made it clearer to users that they are not following the politicians themselves, but that it is an account that will change when the politicians do. If you are not interested in following a new president or vice president, you should not feel compelled to do so.
And that brings me to the larger point: Meta is simply portraying herself as being very sympathetic to the new Trump administration. Finally, Mark Zuckerberg was one of the tech giants present at the inauguration. So when his platform appears to follow the new president, vice president, and first lady on behalf of its users — whether that’s necessarily true or not — that plays into that idea. At the same time, the company is moving openly to the right in its politics and is more committed than ever to politics in general. Earlier this year, Instagram and Threads did a 180-degree shift and made it standard to add political content to feeds from accounts that users don’t follow. At the same time, Meta has also rolled back its fact-checking and hate speech policies on its platforms.
Meta has alienated a significant portion of its user base in recent months. So when these users open their apps and see that they now follow politicians, the company appears to be biased against politicians that these users may vehemently disagree with – creating a situation like the one we’re seeing today, with headlines about it , that Meta forces users to follow Trump, Vance, Melania and the Trump White House. Just scan the comments on the POTUS, VPOTUS, and White House accounts to see how unhappy many users are about following them. (Currently FLOTUS has no posts.)
You may have to wait until you unfollow these accounts
Unfortunately, unfollowing these accounts may not be as easy as clicking unfollow. According to Andy StoneUnfollow requests can take some time to process, meaning you may be stuck with a combination of these three in your feed.
On the other hand, if you was After previously managing any of these three accounts, continue to follow their archived accounts. Archiving prevents you from seeing new posts from these accounts. So it’s your choice whether you continue to be tracked or not.
