Is Metta promoting Trump and Vans on Facebook and Instagram?

Meta is pushing back against claims by social media users that they have been forced to monitor the Facebook and Instagram accounts of US President Donald Trump, his wife Melania Trump and Vice President Jeddie Vance.

The allegations surfaced on Tuesday, a day after Trump took office, with some users claiming that both Meta-owned platforms made them followers of those accounts without their consent.

Pop star Gracie Abrams says she should unfollow Trump and Vance’s official Instagram pages three times because the platform “follows them directly.”

“How curious! I had to block them to make sure I wasn’t anywhere. Sharing if this happens to your accounts,” she wrote. Others said Meta was censoring searches for words like “Democrats” on its platforms as sensitive content.

Meta referred CBC News to social media posts by communications director Andy Stone.

Writing on the MetaThreads forum, Stone said the confusion stemmed from the former administration’s use of the official @POTUS account for Trump’s team.

Anyone who followed @POTUS during the Biden administration, for example, will become a follower once control of the account is handed over to the new administration.

“People are not directed to follow any official Facebook or Instagram accounts of the President, Vice President or First Lady,” Stone wrote.

Stone didn’t directly address the claim that some users need to follow those accounts again and again, but said “it may take some time for these accounts to change hands and leave requests to follow.”

Katie Harbaugh, the former director of public policy for global elections at Facebook, wrote on the tabs that a similar transition occurred between Barack Obama and Trump and again in 2017 between Trump and Joe Biden.

“The old[Facebook pages]go to an archived account and the followers remain, but the feed is scrubbed. That’s how most platforms handle it,” she says.

Brett Carraway, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, said there is a growing perception that Big Tech is moving closer to the Trump administration, and that the tension felt by parts of the American public has been exacerbated by the presence of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. and other tech executives at Trump’s inauguration.

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“Any threat that a dictatorship might visit the United States, one of the first things that happens in that situation is that the dictatorship controls the media,” Carraway said.

“I think there is a general sense of mistrust and hostility directed at the tech industry. And not only on the left. I think it’s on the right side as well,” he said.

Gallup poll from July 2024 He showed. Americans across the political spectrum are similarly distrustful of big tech companies, with 32 percent of Democrats saying they have too much or too much trust, 28 percent of independents and 20 percent of Republicans.

The poll was conducted by telephone with a random sample of 1,005 adults and a 95 percent confidence level of +4 percentage points.

Cyrus Beschlos, founder of GenerationLab in Washington, has been involved in various controversies involving social media companies, especially young people, such as Cambridge Analytica’s scandal with Facebook and, more recently, the TikTok scandal that could be banned in the US. He studies youth and their relationship with government, media and technology.

“I think that kind of latent inner insecurity floats in the ether around them,” Beschloss said.

“My biggest question is, is there a problem? Young people still use whatever social media platform (to use).”