Is Meta Boosting Trump and Vance on Facebook and Instagram?

Meta denies claims by social media users that they were forced to monitor the Facebook and Instagram accounts of US President Donald Trump, his wife Melania Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

The allegations came a day after Trump’s inauguration on Tuesday, with some users saying both Meta-owned platforms made them followers of those accounts without permission.

Pop singer Gracie Abrams said on Instagram that she had to follow Trump and Vance’s official pages three times because the platform “auto-followed” them.

“How interesting! I had to block them to make sure I wasn’t anywhere. I’m sharing if this happens to your accounts as well,” he wrote. Others have argued that Meta censors searches on its platform by labeling searches such as “democrats” as sensitive content.

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

Posting on Meta’s Threads, Stone said the confusion stems from the previous administration giving Trump’s team control of the official @POTUS account.

For example, anyone who followed @POTUS during the Biden administration would still be a follower after control of the account was handed over to the new administration.

“People are not forced to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the president, vice president, or first lady,” Stone wrote.

Stone did not directly address the allegations that some users have repeatedly unfollowed those accounts, but said “as these accounts change hands, it may take some time to follow and track requests.”

Katie Harbath, Facebook’s former director of public policy for global elections, wrote in Threads that a similar transition occurred between Barack Obama and Trump, and in 2017 between Trump and Joe Biden.

“The old (Facebook pages) go to an archived account and the followers remain, but the feed is cleared. Most platforms handle it this way,” he said.

Brett Caraway, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, says there is a growing perception of Big Tech’s rapprochement with the Trump administration, and the tension already felt by some in the American public has been exacerbated by the presence of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. and other tech executives at Trump’s inauguration.

“With all the concerns about the possibility of authoritarianism visiting the United States, one of the first things that usually happens in this kind of scenario is that an authoritarian government takes control of the means of communication,” Caraway said.

“I think there is a general sense of mistrust and hostility towards the tech industry. And it’s not just on the left. I think he is also on the right side,” he said.

Gallup poll as of July 2024 showed that Americans across the political spectrum are equally distrustful of big tech companies; Thirty-two percent of Democrats said they trust them a great deal or quite a bit, followed by 28 percent of independents and 20 percent of Republicans.

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

Cyrus Beschloss, co-founder of the Generation Lab in Washington, said young people in particular have experienced the spectrum of controversy surrounding social media companies, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal with Facebook and, most recently, the potential ban on TikTok in the US. studies young people and their relationships with government, media and technology.

“I think there’s this underlying mistrust in the air around them,” Beschloss said.

“My big question is, does it matter? Young people are still going to use whatever social media platform they’re using.”