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Some Facebook users are claiming the social media platform has automatically made them follow the official accounts for President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance against their wishes.
Posts regarding the President and Vice President's Facebook accounts lit up social media just hours after Trump's inauguration Monday. Two days later, some are still wondering if Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is automatically opting its users in to follow the Trump and Vance.
Others suspected the Meta-owned Instagram of similar practices
Is Facebook Making People Follow Trump and Vance?
After nearly 48 hours of Facebook and Instagram users voicing their suspicions, Meta has addressed the issue. The company claims users are at fault rather than the company forcing accounts to follow pages.
Andy Stone, who the Associated Press identified as a "Meta spokesman," posted about the issue on Threads, which also is owned by Meta.
Stone denied that people users were made to automatically follow the official Facebook and Instagram accounts for Trump, Vance or First Lady Melania Trump. Instead, it was more of a case of the users following the accounts when they represented former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
"Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those Pages changes," Stone said in his post. "This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition."
The Associated Press is reporting that its common practice for posts to be "archived" on Facebook and Instagram accounts connected to the previous administration once a new president is sworn in.'
"These followers are then transferred to the new official accounts," the Associated Press said in its report.
The Inauguration Of Donald J. Trump As The 47th President
Getty ImagesCan You Unfollow Trump And Vance Accounts?
In addition to complaints that Meta was forcing users to follow the official accounts for Trump and Vance, some also claimed that platforms were not allowing them to unfollow the pages even after electing to do so.
Stone also noted that it was more of an issue of timing rather than Facebook and Instagram not allowing users to unfollow.
"It may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands," he said on Threads.
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