Liberal Instagram, Facebook users panic over perceived auto-follow of President Trump

Liberal Facebook and Instagram users freaked out when they realized that they were automatically following President Donald Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance’s accounts after the inauguration — wrongly claiming the platforms were forcing Americans to follow the profiles as “part of the propaganda machine.”The lefty account holders were left dumbfounded when posts from the country’s newly sworn-in leaders appeared on their feeds despite never hitting follow for either Trump or Vance.Some alarmists believed that the supposed auto-follow was the Trump Administration’s first step towards revoking autonomy on Meta-owned social media platforms.Much of the anxiety was fueled by the presence of multiple social media heads sitting front and center at Trump’s inauguration — including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

“wait did facebook auto follow all of the new admin for americans?? i did not follow any of these pages i barely even use facebook but they were all at the top of my feed, and when i clicked through it said i followed them??” one user wrote on X.“Not only is Instagram forcing accounts to auto-follow the VP, but they essentially bought or stole Kamala’s entire follow list.They have the exact same amount of followers and all of the same people I follow, follow both accounts.

People I know don’t want to follow him,” another added.“Believe it or not, I realize today that I was following an account I never followed at all.The automatic follow is part of the propaganda machine social media has become.

I will have to check on a daily basis on a ridiculous (un)following battle I don’t want to be a part of,” a third user wrote.But the panicked social media users were simply following the official US government accounts — which switch over every time a new administration is in the White House as others pointed out in an attempt to quell the growing alarm.“Not to say Meta is above doing sketchy stuff but this wasn’t an ‘auto follow...