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This week, many people made sure to unintentionally start following Donald Trump on Instagram or other social networks. What there was?
When Donald Trump took office this Monday as president of the USA, the presidential accounts in social networks were transferred from Joe Biden to the new president.
The same happened with Kamala Harris e J. D. Vancein the position of vice presidents, and in other positions in the White House.
Over the last two days, thousands of people, on Instagram and other Meta social networks (such as Facebook), commented that they were following the US president’s account, @potus, without them having clicked the button to do so.
Meta issued a statement, cited by , in which it explains that “this is the same procedure we adopted during the last presidential transition”, that is, that the change of presidents does not imply the creation of another page.
Briefly, who previously followed the account @potus, which is the abbreviation for “President of the United States”, which was before Biden, continues to follow the account, even though it is now Trump’s.
ZAP received a statement from an Instagram user who asserts that “unintentionally, she was following Trump and JD Vance’s social networks”.
However, some users claim that never followed the page of the presidency, and who were, unintentionally, following her this week, points out .
However, Meta flatly denies that it “forced” users to follow the pages. “People were not required to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts of the president, vice president, or first lady,” Andy Stonespokesperson for Meta.
It is also necessary to ensure that can’t unfollow the accounts. The company stated that “it may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to be processed.”
Some also say that, even if you are not following the accounts, they appear in the suggestions. According to the NYT, this situation comes from the fact that Meta is making a change that has as one of its main measures reinsert political content nos feeds of people.
However, it has been popular on social media.
Just a heads up, Meta auto followed DJT’s new POTUS account on Facebook for me. I did not do this myself.
— JDP (@jd_pittman)
There are still those who guarantee, says the NYT, that I couldn’t searchthis week, political topics or posts involving the hashtag #democrats (Democrats). The Meta that it was a bug that was affecting “not just people on the left”, which meant that users could not search a number of topics.
“We are having our conditional release and the biased critical spirit due to algorithms and companies created by half a dozen individuals who, in this case, decided to support a TV celebrity“, lamented the same user to ZAP.
“Isn’t this an oligarchic dictatorship in the making?’” another user on X.
The magazine recalls that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, was sitting behind Trump at the inauguration ceremony, and that the businessman decided to donate around 1 million euros to the new president’s inaugural fund.
