By Doyinsola Oladipo
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Some users of the social network Meta said on Wednesday that their accounts were returning to following the profiles of President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and first lady Melania Trump after they unfollowed those accounts once they Trump took office for his second term. .
When a presidential administration changes, the official White House social media accounts are passed to the new elected officials. That happened in 2017 and 2021, when Trump succeeded Barack Obama as president, and then when Joe Biden succeeded Trump.
However, some users said that even after unfollowing the accounts of the president, vice president and first lady since Monday, they found they were soon following those accounts again, in some cases after unfollowing more than once or block the accounts.
“I, like others, repeatedly unfollowed Trump and Vance on Monday, only to find out I was following them again,” said facebook (NASDAQ:) user Anna Springer on Threads, which is also owned by Meta. “I'm not sure if it was just a glitch or something intentional, but it definitely happened.”
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Meta communications director Andy Stone said on x that people who had been following the Biden administration's official accounts moved to the same official accounts under the Trump administration.
“People were not forced to automatically follow any of the official facebook or instagram accounts of the president, the vice president or the first lady,” Stone said on x. “Those accounts are managed by the White House, so with a new administration, the content of those pages changes.”
“Follow and unfollow requests may take some time to process as these accounts change hands,” Stone said on Threads.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
American singer Demi Lovato posted a photo on her instagram story of her following the vice president. “I unfollowed this guy twice today,” she wrote to her 150 million followers.
Others reported that they were also following first lady Melania Trump without choosing to do so.
“Why did my facebook automatically start following Melania Trump this (morning)? What are you doing?” actress and comedian Sarah Colonna said on Threads on Tuesday, tagging Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in her post.
Social media users follow other users to view their posts, usually by clicking a single button. The more followers an account has, the larger the audience that sees its posts.
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