Meta is countering claims that it boosted President Donald Trump and his administration on its platforms as he returned to the Oval Office on Monday.
On Facebook and Instagram, many users expressed alarm that they received notifications that their accounts had followed the pages of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance after their administration took over from former President Joe Biden. But a Meta spokesperson said the changes were part of standard procedure during administrative turnover.
Others noted on Instagram that results for the #democrat hashtag weren’t populating Monday and early Tuesday, instead showing a message stating “We’ve hidden these results,” adding that “Results for the term you searched for may contain sensitive content.”
The complaints came after CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have outwardly shifted their policies and political alignments to the right, leading some users to question if the changes they were observing had something to do with Meta’s political changes.
However, Meta Communications Director Andy Stone took to social media to suggest that what users were observing was a combination of Meta’s usual practice during presidential transitions and an unfortunate error.
Responding to a post from Distill Social, a nonprofit group that complained that Meta was forcing people to follow Trump, Stone wrote that the “POTUS” and “White House” accounts “are managed by the White House and they change when the occupant of the White House changes,” meaning that if you followed those accounts during one administration, you would still be following them as the administration changes over.
In a post on X made after this article was published, Stone said that the same procedures were used as the last presidential transition, and that "People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the President, Vice President or First Lady. Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those Pages changes."
As some users have pointed out, though, Meta has seemingly created new accounts dedicated to archiving the previous administration’s content, which users appear to automatically follow as the administration changes over. As that process has gone through, at least some users were notified that they had started to follow accounts that included those of Trump, Vance and first lady Melania Trump.
Katie Harbath, a former Facebook employee, posted on Threads that her former team set up the presidential accounts transition after Trump won in 2016 and that the account rollover worked the same way in 2020, too.
In his posts Monday, Stone also addressed complaints around the lack of search results for #democrat.
Stone said that Meta is experiencing “an issue affecting people’s ability to search for a number of different hashtags on Instagram — not just those on the left. We’re working quickly to resolve this.”
He did not specify the nature of the issue and Meta declined to add additional comment.
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The confusion has left some users on edge at a time when the social media giant has seemingly veered to the right.
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In a series of policy and practice changes earlier this month, Zuckerberg announced he would replace its fact-checking system — which has been heavily criticized by Trump and conservatives over the disputed belief that it disproportionately targets right-wing content — with a user-driven system similar to X’s Community Notes program.
Zuckerberg said its fact-checkers were “too politically biased,” while Meta also stated its new community-based system would “require agreement between people with a range of perspectives.” In a Facebook video announcing the change, Zuckerberg noted that the election had a major influence on the company’s decision to end its fact-checking system in favor of “prioritizing speech.”
Also this month, Meta announced internally that it would end many of its programs designed to facilitate diversity in hiring, including disbanding its diversity, equity and inclusion team, and discarding its “diverse slate approach.”
And Meta has updated its "hateful conduct" policy, which now allows for posts that call LGBTQ people mentally ill. Zuckerberg said in his video that the company is “simplifying content policies” around topics such as gender and immigration.
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” he said. “I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.”
Zuckerberg, having donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, was also among the major tech billionaires who attended the new president’s inauguration Monday.
“Optimistic and celebrating 🇺🇸,” he posted on Facebook, with a photo of him and his wife, Priscilla Chan, dressed up for the event.
