Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, denies claims that its platforms forced users to follow the accounts of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Many users had complained that their accounts followed Trump and Vance automatically after they were sworn into office.
Meta in a statement on Wednesday reassured users that the company isn’t forcing the follows or controlling their accounts.
Stone said that when an administration changes, the official White House social media accounts roll over to the new president and vice president.
“Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those Pages changes. This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition. It may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands,” Stone said.
Despite Meta’s explanation, however, many users remained suspicious.
In responding to Stone’s explanation, some said they unfollowed the accounts only to find themselves re-following them shortly after. Others claimed that they tried to block the accounts, but the action was automatically reversed.
Users also complained earlier this week that searching for political terms such as “Democrats” prompted a “we’ve hidden these results” message. Stone said that the issue wasn’t isolated to one political party and reassured users that Meta was working to fix the issue.
Just more than two weeks ago, Meta ditched its fact-checking program and replaced it with a “Community Notes” system similar to that used by Elon Musk’s social media platform X.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” Zuckerberg said in a video released on Jan. 7 announcing the major changes.
In recent months, Zuckerberg has built closer ties with the 47th president. The Meta CEO has met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and also had a front-row seat at his inauguration. The company also donated $1 million to the president’s inaugural fund.
