Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) faced user backlash Tuesday after Facebook and Instagram users discovered they were automatically following Trump administration accounts, with some reporting they couldn’t remove the unexpected subscriptions.
“Never once have I followed any Trump or White House pages. My feed is now filled with the official posts,” a Reddit user wrote. Others reported finding themselves following not just official White House accounts, but personal accounts of Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and First Lady Melania Trump.
Meta Communications Director Andy Stone characterized the changes as standard procedure during presidential transitions. Official accounts like “POTUS” and “White House” transfer to new administrations automatically, meaning users who followed these accounts under Biden now follow them under Trump.
However, users noted that Meta appears to have created archive accounts for the previous administration’s content, which some users say they’re being automatically subscribed to during the changeover.
Instagram users also discovered they couldn’t search for Democratic Party-related content, with hashtag searches returning a “sensitive content” warning. Stone attributed this to a broader technical issue “affecting people’s ability to search for a number of different hashtags on Instagram — not just those on the left.”
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The timing coincides with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent platform changes. Earlier this month, Zuckerberg replaced the company’s fact-checking system with a user-driven model, citing concerns that fact-checkers were “too politically biased.”
“In a hyper-partisan environment, even unintentional errors like this can escalate into accusations of partisanship,” social media expert Matt Navarra told the BBC.
Meta appointed Republican Joel Kaplan as global affairs chief, replacing former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. The company also disbanded its diversity, equity and inclusion team and modified its content policies around gender and immigration.
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook video.
Zuckerberg, who donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, attended Monday’s ceremony, posting a photo with his wife Priscilla Chan captioned “Optimistic and celebrating 🇺🇸.”
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