The social media giant has come under fire from some users for allegedly pushing them to follow the accounts of US president Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance
Meta has refuted allegations from some users that it is promoting social media accounts associated with US President Donald Trump and his administration.
This comes after several users were taken aback to find themselves following the accounts of Mr Trump and his Vice President JD Vance post their inauguration on Monday. Meta emphasised that the accounts linked to the president and vice president are tied to the office, not the individual.
Therefore, if users followed these accounts during the previous administration, they would continue to do so under Mr Trump and Mr Vance. Meta’s communication director Andy Stone clarified on various social media platforms that presidential and White House accounts “are managed by the White House and they change when the occupant of the White House changes”.
The same applies to other accounts related to the US presidency, including those of the vice president and first lady. However, some users have further alleged that they were compelled to follow these accounts and found it impossible to unfollow them.
Singer Gracie Abrams shared on her Instagram Stories that she had to “unfollow @vp and @potus three (3) 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.”
A spokesperson for Meta has clarified in a statement: “People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the president, vice president or first lady.” They added: “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.”
This comes after users voiced complaints following a series of significant policy changes from the tech giant, which seem to align more closely with the politics of Mr Trump and his supporters. Earlier this month, Meta’s boss Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company was ending fact-checking in the US due to its “politically biased” nature, and would instead introduce a community notes system similar to the one on X, run by Trump ally Elon Musk.
Furthermore, the company revealed it was relaxing its content moderation controls to support free expression and was also terminating its diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programmes. Mr Zuckerberg was among several tech CEOs who attended Mr Trump’s inauguration, leading to speculation that Meta and others were seeking to curry favour with the new president.
In other news, reports suggest that Meta is offering up to five thousand dollars (£4,000) to popular social media influencers in the US to join Facebook and Instagram.
As the future of TikTok – a massively popular platform for online content creators – remains uncertain in the US, Mr Trump signed an executive order on Monday. This order gives the company a 75-day extension to find a buyer for its American business or risk being cut off in the US due to national security concerns about its parent company ByteDance and potential links to the Chinese government.