Right after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, many Facebook users encountered an unexpected situation. On social media platforms and sites like Reddit, several users claimed that they suddenly noticed they were automatically following Trump’s Facebook page. So, is Facebook really forcing users to follow Trump, or is there another explanation?
Why is Facebook Showing Trump’s Posts?
Although Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his team have faced criticism for seeming to take a closer stance with Trump, there may be a simpler explanation for this situation. Facebook officials have stated that this is a standard practice regarding social media management.
Facebook’s Communications Director, Andy Stone, chose not to comment directly and instead directed users to a post on Threads. In the post, it explains that when presidential administrations and White House accounts change, their followers are transferred as well. So, users who followed the White House and POTUS (President of the United States) accounts during Joe Biden’s presidency may have automatically followed the version of Trump’s administration when he took office.
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A similar situation occurred during previous presidential elections and transitions of power. For instance, when Joe Biden took office in 2021, the White House and POTUS accounts left over from Trump’s era were taken over, but many users didn’t notice this at the time.
It’s hard to determine whether Facebook intentionally made these changes or if they were caused by system errors. However, how social media platforms manage these types of algorithmic changes will likely continue to be debated in the future.
What do you think? Is Facebook really forcing users to follow Trump, or is it just a technical glitch? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
