If you were once following former President Biden and Vice President Kamala on Instagram, you may now be following President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. The change, which was met with anger and confusion from some, comes because the official accounts for the President of the United States (@POTUS), and Vice President (@VP), for instance, automatically get turned over to the next Administration.
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Official accounts designating leaders or important members of an administration are separate from Trump or Vance’s personal social media accounts. But some users claimed they were unable to unfollow Trump, and blamed Instagram. Meta, which owns Instagram, has said this is normal procedure.
“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,” Andy Stone, a communications spokesperson for Meta, shared on X on Wednesday. “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.”
Under the practice, official accounts for higher positions of power retain their followers but the posts on the page are wiped clean. This also includes accounts on X. President Barack Obama, who was the first president to have an official presidential account on X, documented the switch in a 2016 blogpost.
Archives of the previous administration’s social media posts are preserved with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
Other official accounts, such as those for the Press Secretary, have also transitioned.
The online frenzy related to following such accounts came as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was sitting behind Trump t at the Inauguration with other tech CEOs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Zuckerberg also recently donated $1 million dollars to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram were previously temporarily suspended after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots.
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