Reason why you may be automatically following President Trump and Vice President Vance on Instagram without choosing to

vt-author-image

By Asiya Ali

Article saved!Article saved!

With Donald Trump back in the White House, some Instagram users have noticed something strange: they’re suddenly following the new president and vice president, JD Vance, without having chosen to do so.

If this sounds like you, don’t panic - it’s not a conspiracy, and the explanation is far more simple than some of the theories floating around.

GettyImages-2194971097.jpgInstagram users noticed that they were automatically following Donald Trump and JD Vance. Credit: Christopher Furlong / Getty

Some users claim they’ve been automatically added as followers of Trump and Vance’s official Instagram accounts, even after unfollowing them several times. 

Social media has been buzzing with complaints. "Why did Instagram automatically make me follow Trump and Vance," one person questioned, while another said: "Woke up to my Instagram following Jd Vance when I NEVER did so…"

One user from Australia shared: "I’m Australian. I had no idea who JD Vance was and my insta was following him. In no world did I follow someone I didn’t know the existence of."

Even high-profile stars have come forward to speak about this. Grammy-winner Demi Lovato claims to have unfollowed Vance's account twice but the platform won’t let her do it, calling it "shady business," while British model Cara Delevingne also posted a screenshot to her story claiming that it’s "happening to me".

Singer Gracie Abrams joined in on the discussion, writing on her Instagram Story that she has had to "unfollow @VP [the Instagram account associated with the Vice President] and @POTUS three (3) separate times today because @meta kept automatically refollowing accounts".

"How curious! Had to block them in order to make sure I am nowhere near that. Sharing in case this is happening to your accounts as well," she added.

Screenshot 2025-01-22 at 16.09.08.pngDemi Lovato called out Meta on Instagram. Credit: Demi Lovato / Instagram

Meta, Instagram’s parent company, has come forward to address the confusion.

In a post on Threads, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone clarified: “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,” per Cosmopolitan.

Essentially, this means that when a new administration takes office, the official White House social media accounts - including those for the president, vice president, and first lady - are transferred to reflect the new leadership.

So as Trump was sworn in on January 20, Joe Biden's account is now called @potus46archive, while Trump’s current account is @potus. The 82-year-old's archived page retains its followers but no longer posts new content.

The same process occurred on Facebook, where Biden’s archived page is titled 'President Joe Biden Archived' and Trump’s current page is called 'President Donald J. Trump.' Both pages have around 11 million followers.

GettyImages-2194970302.jpgCredit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty

Katie Harbath, Facebook’s former director of public policy for global elections, explained in a Threads post that this has been standard practice for years.

“Just to back up what Andy is saying,” she wrote, “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,” she added.

Featured image credit: Anna Moneymaker / Getty