Social media is full of claims that Meta forced Facebook and Instagram users to follow President Trump. "Full dictatorship incoming," one Reddit user warned, per USA Today. But these claims are false, according to fact-checking site Snopes and other media outlets. The social media accounts for the US president and vice president, typically marked @POTUS and @VP, automatically flipped from President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to President Trump and VP JD Vance with Monday's inauguration, as did the accounts for the first lady (@FLOTUS). These White House-managed accounts "change when the occupant of the White House changes," explains Meta rep Andy Stone.
The old accounts are archived—see @potus46archive, @vp46archive, @flotus46archive, etc.—then wiped, offering a clean slate for the incoming administration. But the followers remain the same. That's why users who followed Biden and Harris suddenly saw posts from Trump and Vance on their feeds beginning Monday. "Same was done during the transfer from Trump to Biden," Katie Harbath, Facebook's former election boss, wrote Tuesday on Threads.
However, some users "have reported unfollowing the accounts, only to notice they're following them again hours later," per HuffPost. Others say they never followed the accounts at all. Additionally, Mashable confirmed claims that the #Democrat hashtag was blocked on Instagram for a time, while #Republican remained visible. "We're aware of an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum and we are working quickly to resolve it," Meta said in a statement, per the BBC. Still, these claims, coming after big changes at Meta, have led some groups to accuse the company of pandering to Trump and Republicans. (More Meta stories.)