Users Who Weren't Following Donald Trump and J.D. Vance on Facebook and Instagram Might Be Now. Here's Why

Mar. 15, 2025

Vice President J.D. Vance (left) and President Donald Trump (right) on Jan. 20.Photo:Anna Moneymaker/Getty

Anna Moneymaker/Getty

Some Facebook and Instagram users discovered they were following PresidentDonald Trumpand Vice PresidentJ.D. Vance’s accounts after their inauguration on Monday, Jan. 20. This is likely because they were following White House accounts before Trump and Vance took their oaths of office.

This also applies to the first lady and vice president accounts.

President Donald Trump signing executive orders on Jan. 20.Anna Moneymaker/Getty

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

In afollow-up Threads poston Wednesday, Jan. 22, Stone claimed that users “were not made to automatically follow” the official Facebook or Instagram accounts of Trump, Vance or first lady Melania Trump.

When Trump took office, the Facebook and Instagram accounts of now-former President Joe Biden were archived. For example, Biden’s Instagram account is now @potus46archive, while Trump’s official White House account is @potus. The @potus46archive account still has its followers, which were also transferred to the new @potus account.

On Facebook, Biden’s archived page is called “President Joe Biden Archived” and has 11 million followers. Trump’s official page is called “President Donald J. Trump” and also has 11 million followers.

Katie Harbath, who was Facebook’s director of public policy for global elections before leaving in 2021, explained how the transfers to new administrations worked in 2016 and 2021.

“Just to back up what Andy is saying, my team set up the first ways of having to do this when Trump won in 2016 and we had to transfer the official accounts that President Obama’s team created when Facebook pages were first created,” Harbath wrote onThreads, in response to Stone. “Same was done during the transfer from Trump to Biden. The old ones go to an archived account and the followers remain, but the feed is wiped clean. Most platforms handle it this way.”

Some Facebook and Instagram users claim they are following Trump and Vance’s pages despite not having previously followed political pages. “I was never following either. Happened to several friends as well,” aThreads user claimed. Several Facebook users also claimed this happened in aReddit thread.

Meta also told theNew York Timesthat it “may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through” during the account transitions.

source: people.com