You Might Be Following Trump on Social Media Without Meaning To

In the two days since Donald Trump was sworn into office, you may have noticed something odd on social media: You and your friends might be following Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, first lady Melania Trump, and the Trump White House on Instagram and Facebook, despite never following these three individuals before. It begs the question: Did Meta automatically follow these accounts on your behalf?

Instagram isn’t necessarily forcing you to follow Trump

According to Meta, the answer is no. The company is referring outlets to a post on Threads from Meta communications spokesperson Andy Stone, who says: “A reminder: the Facebook.com/POTUS and Facebook.com/White… accounts are managed by the White House. They change when the occupant of the White House changes.” Cosmopolitan obtained another statement from Meta, which reads: “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.”

The explanation makes some sense: If the account, like the presidency itself, is more than just its current occupant, then users who follow the official POTUS, VPOTUS, and FLOTUS accounts are really following whoever happens to be president, vice president, and first lady at the time. In fact, it’s what happened last time: This CNN article from January of 2021 talks about how most social media platforms—including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube—transitioned 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, and instead shared alerts with users about how to follow the new accounts.

Some users are pointing to the fact Meta itself seems to suggest these accounts are brand new. If you look at the official account of the President (not Trump’s personal account, mind you) Instagram says the “date joined” was January 2025. (The verification date is exactly the same.) That is adding to the confusion from users: Meta says these accounts are established and changing with the current holder of the office, but also that Trump’s POTUS account was made this month. However, if you look at President Biden’s archived account, it says the date joined and verified was January 2021, suggesting the Biden account was also started when he assumed power.

To me, the issue lies more in miscommunication, polarization, and existing grievances from users with the platform. Meta should have made it clearer to users that they were not following the politicians themselves, rather an account that will change when the politicians do. If you have no interest in following a new president or vice president, you shouldn’t feel you were forced to do so.

And that brings me to the larger point: Meta is simply setting themselves up to look very sympathetic to the new Trump administration. Mark Zuckerberg was one of the tech giants who attended the inauguration, after all, so when his platform seemingly follows the new president, vice president, and first lady on behalf of its users—whether that’s necessarily true or not—it plays into that idea. That comes at the same time the company is openly moving rightward with its politics, and embracing politics in general more than ever. Earlier this year, Instagram and Threads did a 180, making it the default to add political content to feeds from accounts users don’t follow. At the same time, Meta also backtracked its policies on fact-checking and hate speech across its platforms.

Meta has alienated a sizable portion of its user base in recent months, so when those users open their apps to see that they’re now following politicians the company seems biased towards—politicians those users may vehemently disagree with—it creates a situation like what we see today, with headlines abuzz about Meta forcing 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 to be following them. (At this time, FLOTUS has no posts.)

You might have to wait to unfollow these accounts

Unfortunately, unfollowing these accounts might not be as easy as, well, hitting “unfollow.” According to Andy Stone, it might take some time for unfollow requests to process, which means you might be stuck with any combination of these three in your feed.

On the other hand, if you were following the previous administration on any of these three accounts, you will still be following their archived accounts, as well. Being archived, you won’t see new posts from these accounts, so the choice is up to you whether to stay followed or not.