Some Meta users have found themselves automatically following US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s accounts on social media after the inauguration this week, despite not previously following them or liking their page.
The probable explanation is that this happened because those users had previously followed the official US government accounts, which change owners.
“A reminder: the Facebook.com/potus and Facebook.com/White… accounts are managed by the White House. They change when the occupant of the White House changes," Andy Stone, Meta's communication director, further clarified on Threads.
This also applies to the accounts for the US Vice President and US First Lady. After the new president is sworn in, the Facebook and Instagram accounts of the previous administration are archived and the posts, as well as followers, are preserved. These followers are then transferred to the new official accounts.
Former President Joe Biden’s now archived Potus account had 11 million followers on Facebook and 18.3 million followers on Instagram.
Meanwhile, Meta has been making changes to its platforms. Earlier this month, it announced it would end its third-party fact-checking programme and use Community Notes instead.
The company says the move is aimed at promoting free expression and reducing accusations of bias in content moderation.
"The fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US," said Mark Zuckerberg. The Meta founder and chief executive was also among tech billionaires in attendance at Trump's inauguration, along with Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google's parent company Alphabet, and Shou Zi Chew, the chief executive of TikTok.
Notably, his announcement follows years of criticism directed at Meta for its failure to effectively address hate speech, disinformation and other problematic content on Facebook and Instagram.
Zuckerberg also said the social media company would soon be increasing the amount of political content on its platforms.
“We're bringing back civic content,” he said in a video. “For a while, the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed, so we stopped recommending these posts, but it feels like we're in a new era now and we're starting to get feedback that people want to see this content again.”