As Donald Trump returns to the White House, some Instagram users have noticed that they are suddenly following the new president and vice president, sparking curiosity.
It’s important to clarify that these users did not intentionally start following Donald Trump and JD Vance only to forget about it later.
Several Instagram users have reported that they never visited either of these pages, yet they are now receiving updates from them in their feeds.
Some individuals have even stated that they have unfollowed these political figures multiple times.
This has led to a variety of theories, although the actual explanation is quite simple and not very thrilling.
Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, the company that owns Instagram, sought to provide clarity on the situation to ease the confusion among users.
He explained in a Threads post: “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.”
This also applies to the accounts for the first lady and vice president.
As Trump assumed office on January 20, the Facebook and Instagram accounts of the former President, Joe Biden, were archived.
For instance, Biden’s Instagram handle has been changed to @potus46archive, while Trump now uses @potus for the official White House account.
Although Biden’s followers remain, they were also moved to the new @potus account.
On Facebook, Biden’s archived page is labeled ‘President Joe Biden Archived’ with 11 million followers, while Trump’s page, ‘President Donald J. Trump,’ also boasts 11 million followers.
Katie Harbath, Facebook’s former director of public policy for global elections, noted that this process is not unprecedented, explaining how administration transfers occurred in 2016 and 2021.
In another Threads post, she reiterated: “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.
“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.”
For those not wishing to follow Trump or Vance, the method for unfollowing or blocking them is unchanged. Users can simply click the three dots to access the ‘unfollow’ and ‘block’ options.