Home Money & Business Business If you’re now auto-following Trump on Facebook, it’s likely due to your past likes on the POTUS page.

If you’re now auto-following Trump on Facebook, it’s likely due to your past likes on the POTUS page.

0
If you’re now auto-following Trump on Facebook, it’s likely due to your past likes on the POTUS page.

San Francisco — This week, numerous users of Facebook and Instagram were taken aback to discover that they were now automatically following the profiles of President Donald Trump or Vice President JD Vance following the presidential inauguration. This unexpected occurrence can largely be attributed to the fact that many of these users had previously subscribed to official accounts belonging to the U.S. government.

In a post on Threads, a spokesperson from Meta, Andy Stone, clarified that the official accounts for the President of the United States (POTUS) and the White House are managed by the White House itself, and these accounts “change when the occupant of the White House changes.” This protocol also applies to the social media accounts of the Vice President and the First Lady.

Upon the swearing-in of the new president, the social media accounts of the outgoing administration are archived, which allows for the preservation of both their posts and their follower counts. Subsequently, these followers are shifted over to the official accounts of the newly inaugurated officials.

As of Tuesday morning, the archived POTUS account for Joe Biden boasted 11 million followers on Facebook, a number that mirrored that of Donald Trump’s official POTUS account. For those who wish to remove their following of any undesired account, they can do so by clicking the ellipsis on the profile page and selecting either “unfollow” or “block.”