Article in VOX by Rebecca Jenninga, 1/24/25

Headline:  “It’s not conspiratorial to be worried about social media’s rightward swing”

Subhead:  “Meta denies any funny business on Instagram in the aftermath of Trump’s inauguration. Should we believe them?”

“Many Instagram users this week had their scrolling interrupted by the bearded visage of our newly elected Vice President JD Vance. Suddenly it seemed that on the week of their inauguration, everybody on the app was following or being suggested to follow the official accounts of President Donald Trump and Vance (@POTUS and @VP, respectively).

“Chaos ensued. In group chats, on Instagram Stories, on X, and Bluesky, people frantically wondered what was up. Some, like pop stars Gracie Abrams and Demi Lovato, said that when they tried to unfollow the VP and POTUS accounts, the app wouldn’t let them until they attempted multiple times.

Meta, meanwhile, has been busy assuring users that nothing new or weird is going on here. The accounts for the POTUS and VP, including their followers, were automatically handed over to the new administration as is customary during a presidential transition, while the accounts for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris previously under those usernames would be duplicated in an archive account. They’ve said it ‘may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through’ but did not provide details when asked by the New York Times why that might be. Hashtags like #democrat were hidden, Meta said, due to ‘an error’ that affected many hashtags, not just left-leaning ones (those hashtags are now visible).”

https://www.vox.com/culture/396686/facebook-instagram-tiktok-conservative-trump