Why people are breaking up with Meta
After Meta’s recent decisions and their latest use of user data, many more Americans have begun to distrust Meta.
By: Karla Pastrana
Meta is back at it again! The tech super giant raises red flags and makes people question their ethical codes. Meta has had a long record of questionable actions, and it’s nothing more but a toxic lover that many are breaking up with. Their recent action of forcing many to follow the new official pages of the new administration has only caused many to turn to other social media outlets and cut ties with Meta.
On Jan. 20 many American users of Meta’s social medias reported that they discovered they were following the new administration’s official Meta social media accounts, without their consent. Many users finding are out either by seeing The White House shared post with President Trumps presidential profile appearing on their feed. While others found out either by users like Campcallout’s reel alerting people of the issue or being messaged by loved ones.
Now before I continue, I want to make it clear that in fairness, I don’t usually believe these things. However, as a journalist if there is something amiss happening within the social media atmosphere, I must investigate it. A duty that is needed for society to keep records of events those in power may want to hide from history. Hence making it important for democracy to hold us all accountable for our actions.
Upon finding out that these accusations were indeed true, I took it upon myself to investigate.
I began flagging down friends who I know disagree with President Trump’s policies and how said policies may impact their lives in negative manners. They were shocked to find this out and began alerting others as well.
Soon the news of the forced follows became a trending topic in many people’s feeds.
The large number of reports and complaints lead to Meta’s spokesperson, Andy Stone to explain the situation in an X post that same day. Stone explained that the reason people were following the new presidential and vice presidential accounts was because people were following the pervious president’s and vice president’s account.
“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,” Stone said on another post to expand more on the issue.
However, users pointed out the fact that if the White House’s PR and media team had changed the content of their pages, the presidential and vice presidential page wouldn’t have the “New” sticker appearing below the profile picture on Instagram. A sticker that only appears when a new account is created. Some argued that the sticker may have appeared due to the new content, however. This doesn’t occur when you change content.
Instagram’s official Help Center states that the only time users will be notified when you change something on your profile and change your username. Not a single person received any notification of President Biden’s presidential account being changed from Potus46 to Potus.
As the discourse blew up, Facebook’s former election boss Katie Harbath posted on Threads to address the situation. In her thread Harbath stated that her team had created a system back in 2016 that rolled over followers from old presidential accounts to the new ones.
“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,” Harbath wrote.
In an NBC News article, Meta mentioned that when that does happen, a few users got a notification that notified them that they’re following the accounts. Making many assume the system is meant to notify users of this data transfer, however Meta did not expand on that aspect. Causing the distrust to rise even more among users.
Now when you combine the explanations of both Stone and Harbath on the issue. it would make sense if it weren’t for the fact that many people didn’t get the notification. Influencer and host Riena Scully posted on her Instagram story that she was notified by her followers that she was following the new administration accounts.
In her story she acknowledged what Meta said, however she begged to differ. “I stopped following the potus account the moment Obama left office and I’ve only ever followed Biden/Harris names accounts. B) I’ve never actively followed Vance’s account.”
In addition, voice actress Barabra Dunkleman also posted on her story talking about the situation and alerting fans to check their follows, as just like Scully, she wasn’tnotified about following the new administration accounts. In the same story, she pointed out that the previous administration’s accounts were renamed potus46archive and vp46archive.
“This is so disgusting and sad,” Dunkleman said.
To make matters worse, users like American singer Demi Lovato stated how they have unfollowed the new presidential and vice presidential accounts, but they keep getting forced to follow them. Once again, Stone took it up to social media to explain that the system was slowly processing the high number of unfollow requests according to Reuters.
Now with all these problems popping up, I jumped onto the internet and dug around Instagram for myself. I looked at the Help Center, Meta Help Center and throughout the internet to learn more how their rollover system works. I am sad to report that I didn’t find anything about this system.
Each time I tried to search for the Meta follower rollover program, the only thing that appeared was information on what a rollover is financially by the IRS and Meta’s employees 401(K). I searched up this system by rewriting the question in different phrases such as “meta rollover accounts,” “meta social media rollover accounts announcement,” “meta social media rollover accounts announcement 2016,” and “rollover Meta.”
Financial rollover accounts and Meta Horizon followers’ system for minors on both Google, Bing, and most importantly Meta’s official websites!
As for the archive of information, the Instagram Help Center explained that you can’t archive an entire account. You can only archive posts and stories. Things that are archived are then hidden from the public eye. The closest thing you can do to archiving an entire account on Instagram is by disabling it.
The disabling system works just as the archiving posts and stories, it hides the account from the public eye which the past administration’s archived accounts aren’t. They are visible just as the sky! Lastly, when you click on “About this Account” on top of the profile it states that both President Trumps and Vice President Vance’s accounts were made this year in January. Increasing the doubt of users even more than it already was due to the dates backing up the “new” stamp under their profile ID photos and differing with what Harbath said.
Instagram users alerting others about Meta forcing them to follow the new administration official social media accounts. Source: ?catsonacoach via Instagram
And if you’re confused by this whole ordeal, don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Many of us are, because Meta states one thing yet their actions beg to differ. It reminds me of how toxic and abusive partners gaslight their partners. I ’ll admit, I’m honestly not shocked at Meta. The company has been doing many disturbing things to its users for a long time, such as the use of AI in their systems, which is stealing art from artists. Then we have AI ran accounts, and of course the heavy censorship that was very visible during 2020. Censorship that impacted both sides of the political aisle.
If you recall during 2020 many in the Republican party and conservatives voiced the fact that Meta was censoring their voices by taking down and moderating their posts. The same thing was happening during the Black Lives Matter movement, which caused many to break up with Meta and move to TikTok due to the tight moderation.
Looking into the past, I don’t recall nor could find news reports of anyone in the Republican party or conservatives mentioning that Meta had forced them to follow the Biden administration accounts after President Trump left office. This is unless Meta was once again throwing things under the rug and moderating their posts, which wouldn’t shock me.
Hence, why I can’t help but shake the voice in the back of my head that Meta may have done this on purpose once again to control its users. It also doesn’t help that my research is backing up this feeling of uneasiness.
I also acknowledge that maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this was a simple IT malfunction! Meta needs to fix a lot of problems to avoid these types of misunderstandings in the future, because right now they’ve lost even more users than they already had, days before this situation as NBC news recalls. If this continues, Meta’s apps could become a second rated socials media app.
Bluesky, Xiaohongshu (Little Rednote) and other social media platforms have become the new mainstream, since TikTok’s fate is still unknown.
What Meta needs to do to gain the trust once again is release a full statement discussing the rollover system of official presidential accounts. It should provide a warning message to users when they follow official political accounts that they will automatically be following the next president if they are following the current one.
Kimmi_rhoades video showing her wife being unable to unfollow and block the vp account on Instagram no matter how many times she does. Source: Kimmi_rhoades via Instagram
Then, before each election, troubleshoot the system to make sure all users following the presidential accounts get a notification that alerts them that the rollover is about to go into effect once a new president is sworn in.
Or even better yet, email all users asking them for their consent to allow the system to add their follow to the new account from the soon to be archived presidential account. If they click “yes” or don’t respond to the email, then the system will transfer their data to the new account from the archived one. And if the users are mad about it then pull out the receipts and show that users were notified. Just to make sure spam people till they chose an option to avoid this level of distrust.
Lastly, prepare the team and system for the mass traffic of people requesting to unfollow and follow government accounts in all levels, from local to national. Especially the national since it is well known by now that when there is a new leadership people will unfollow the official accounts because they don’t agree with the new leadership. The fact the Meta team wasn’t ready for this massive change just shows disorganization and lack of planning.
Remember Meta, users trust mediums that are organized. These latest actions just showed disorganization. Organization and clarity is what will help gain trust once more. Along with other things like staying neutral, but that’s another conversation for another day.
Till then do better for misunderstandings and miscommunication are the key to breaking a relationship of any kind Meta. Right now, Bluesky is looking real good and I’m debating on returning to my ex– Tumblr. But I’m willing like a few to work this out. Are you?
