If you’re an active Instagram or Facebook user, you might want to quickly double-check who you’re following. After the presidential transition from Joe Biden to Donald Trump that took place at the Capitol on Jan. 20, many people have noticed they’re suddenly following the current president and Vice President JD Vance on social media via their Instagram handles @POTUS and @VP — similar issues have been reported for Trump’s official Facebook account as well. This has caused mass confusion among those who insist they never took actions to follow these accounts, and some have even reported difficulties when trying to unfollow these accounts. If you’re one of these people, here’s what’s known about what happened, and what to do about it.
For starters, the fact that you’re suddenly following political leaders you don’t want updates from might not be as sinister as it initially seems. “People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the President, Vice President, or First Lady,” Meta’s communications director Andy Stone shared on Threads on Jan. 22. “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.”
Basically, this means that, after an inauguration, the official White House Facebook and Instagram accounts — think @POTUS, @VP, @FLOTUS, and @whitehouse — transfer from the old administration to the new one. During this transition, the feeds are wiped clean and the old posts are archived on an account dedicated to the former administration. For example, former Vice President Harris’ account was archived, and is now known on Instagram as @vp46archive.
The second part of Stone’s Threads post is also worth paying attention to, as it addresses the more alarming concern in relation to this odd phenomenon: The fact that people have been reporting that they’ve tried to unfollow these accounts multiple times, only to end up automatically following them again and again on the platform.
“Are the VP and POTUS Instagram accounts buying followers?” X user @fabianarocioo wrote on Jan. 21. “My account has randomly followed them THREE times today, even though I’ve never followed them before. I’ve unfollowed them each time, but it keeps happening automatically.”
okay so this is really weird but i have unfollowed potus, vp, and white house on instagram THREE TIMES and it keeps making me follow them. i had to resort to blocking but what the actual fuck
— emma (@taybrinatimes) January 21, 2025
Even some users from outside the U.S. seem to be encountering this problem.
Why the F am I following the Vice president of the U.S? Apparently Meta has auto followed him for some Instagram users. I don’t even live in that country let alone care about who he is 😳
— Taurus Tee 🇵🇸 (@biiiiiih_) January 22, 2025
Even public figures have spoken out about it. On Jan. 21, singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams posted an Instagram Story about her experience attempting to unfollow the president and vice president three times. “Had to block them in order to make sure I am nowhere near that,” she wrote.
But does blocking these accounts actually help solve the problem? Her Campus reached out to Meta to find out, but did not receive a response to this request. According to posts shared on social media, however, it seems some users are still finding themselves following these accounts even after blocking them. If Stone’s Threads post is correct, this issue should be resolved soon — although how long “some time” will take remains to be seen.