Meta is denying claims circulating on social media that it forced Facebook and Instagram users to follow President TrumpOfficial accounts stated that the changes observed by some users were standard practices associated with the transition of the POTUS account from the previous administration to the incoming administration.
The company also said it was working to resolve an issue on Instagram that temporarily blocked certain political terms, including “Democrat” and “Republican” from search results.
Some Facebook and Instagram users informed On Monday that their accounts automatically followed the accounts of President Trump, Vice President Vance and First Lady Melania Trump under the handles @POTUS, @VicePresident and @FLOTUS, respectively. Some people said they never followed the accounts before and when they tried to unfollow the pages they were blocked from doing so.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone Said The company did not allow people's accounts to follow the President's official Facebook and Instagram accounts. Instead, people who previously followed the official POTUS account updated it to reflect President Trump take charge,
“This is the same process we followed during the last presidential transition,” Stone said. He said people may experience delays when they try to follow or unfollow them, “because these accounts keep changing.”
“Meta does not make anyone follow any accounts and we never have,” Nkechi Nnezi, Meta's director of public affairs, told CBS News. Nneji said people may have forgotten that he chose to follow official White House accounts during the previous administration.
Katie Harbath, Facebook's former public policy director for global elections from 2011 to 2021, Said His team was involved in helping establish the company first presidential social media transformation As soon as Obama left office in 2017.
Trump administration followed similar protocols again in 2021 When they handed over the accounts to the Biden administration. This process allows each incoming president to have a clean slate for his or her social media profiles.
“This will give them the opportunity to set up the page how they want, make sure it has a cover photo, all that jazz,” Harbath told CBS News. “It was then decided that under the assumption that people were following the organization – no matter who was in it – that the followers would be mirrored, copied to the new page.”
In general, when users want to unfollow an account on Facebook, they can click the ellipsis on that profile page and press the “Unfollow” or “Block” button.
Additionally, some Instagram users informed When they searched for “democrat” and other political terms they were unable to see results, but they were able to see results for “republican.”
Stone express reaction on Tuesday's claims, saying that a technical issue was “impacting people's ability to find many different hashtags on the platform — not just left-wing hashtags.” Nneji told CBS News on Wednesday that technical issues with searching for political and non-political terms have mostly been resolved on the mobile app.
CBS News searched for variations of “Democrat” and “Republican” on the mobile version of Instagram on Wednesday and returned millions of results.
However, on the desktop version of Instagram, the search did not return any results for “republican” and “democrat”, but did return results for “republican” and “democrat”. Additionally, there were no results for other terms such as “Constitution” on the desktop version, but over one million results on the mobile app.
Mr Trump had personal Facebook and Instagram accounts Suspended Following the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the company his post said Incited violence. they had accounts reactivated In 2023.
The timing of the latest issues has raised concern among some Facebook and Instagram users. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attended President Trump's inauguration on Monday along with other tech leaders, including X boss Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Zuckerberg announced the end Facebook's third-party fact-checking program on January 7 led to what he said were concerns about bias and over-enforcement of the rules. Instead the platform will take a community approach similar to X Community Notes,
Zuckerberg also announced the launch of the platform in a phased manner More recommendations for political content, reversal of decision taken February 2021 when zuckerberg Said He received feedback that people “don't want politics and fighting to take over their experience.”
Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, said a statement Meta's website stated that the change was “an effort to return to our commitment to free expression.”
“That means being alert to the impact our policies and systems have on people's ability to speak out, and having the humility to change our approach when we realize we're getting it wrong,” Kaplan said.
Corinne McSherry, Legal Director Electronic Frontier Foundationa nonprofit digital rights organization, told CBS News that social platforms are not transparent enough about how their platforms work for users.
“This is a real fundamental problem,” McSherry said. “The problem is though [that is] Having that happen shows a lot of confusion and difficulty from a user perspective in actually understanding how to set it up, you know. [and] Manage their settings so they don't get content they don't want. And I think all platforms still have a very long way to go.”
