Meta accused of auto-following social media accounts of Donald Trump and JD Vance - as users unable to reverse move
22 January 2025, 18:36 | Updated: 23 January 2025, 07:54
Social media users have been left up in arms amid claims their accounts have auto-followed social media accounts linked to US president Donald Trump and his administration.
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Meta has denied the claims - despite social media users expressing surprise when they discovered they were now following the official accounts of Mr Trump and his vice president JD Vance following their inauguration on Monday.
In response, the social media giant has highlighted that the accounts linked to the president and vice president of the United States are linked to the office, rather than the individual, and if users followed those accounts during the previous administration, they would still be following them now they had passed to Mr Trump and Mr Vance.
Posting to a number of social media channels, Meta communication director Andy Stone said that presidential and White House accounts were "managed by the White House and they change when the occupant of the White House changes".
This was also true of other accounts linked to the US presidency, including that of the vice president and first lady.
But 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.
Singer Gracie Abrams, in a post to her Instagram Stories, said 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."
Meta has not commented on that issue.
The complaints from users come in the wake of a range of major policy shifts from the tech giant, which have seen it move closer to the politics of Mr Trump and his supporters.
Earlier this month, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta was ending fact-checking in the US because it was "politically biased" and would instead introduce a community notes system such as the one on X, run by Trump ally Elon Musk.
In addition, the company said it was loosening its content moderation controls in an effort to support free expression and was also ending its diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programmes.
Mr Zuckerberg was also among a host of tech chief executives to attend Mr Trump's inauguration, with commentators suggesting Meta and others were looking to garner the new president's favour.
Meanwhile, it has been reported that Meta is offering to pay up to five thousand dollars (£4,000) to popular social media influencers in the US to join Facebook and Instagram.
It comes as the future of TikTok - a hugely popular portal for online content creators - continues to face an uncertain future in the US.
Mr Trump signed an executive order on Monday which gave the firm a 75-day extension to find a buyer for its American business, or face being cut off in the US over national security concerns about its parent company ByteDance and its possible links to the Chinese government.
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