The number of followers and fans of Donald Trump and JD Vance on Facebook and Instagram has increased dramatically since Monday. You would think that would be logical because the two have just become president and vice president of the US, but many people on social media say that they have never liked or followed those accounts. Meta denies that any tampering took place.
There are many thousands of people who post on social media that they suddenly follow and like accounts of the American president and his vice president, even though they have never done so themselves. It also happened to the Flemish entrepreneur Veronique Leysen, as she shares on Instagram. “Speechless,” she writes with a screenshot of JD Vance’s account on Instagram, which she suddenly appears to be following.
Many social media users point to Meta, the company above the two social media. CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated a lot of money to Donald Trump’s campaign and was also one of the most famous guests prominently present at the president’s inauguration on Monday.
Meta responds
But, says communications director Andy Stone, there is no question of tampering. On So those who followed Joe Biden’s official presidential account on Instagram are now following Donald Trump because the name and photo have been changed. The same goes for Kamala Harris and JD Vance. (Read more below the tweet)
Yet a small number of users write that they suddenly follow many conservative pages on social media that they did not follow before. They wonder whether Meta has anything to do with this. The company has not yet responded.
What Stone responded to was the frequently heard criticism that the hashtag #democrat suddenly did not yield any search results on Monday and Tuesday. It didn’t even seem to exist. This is a mistake, he says, that still needs to be looked at internally and resolved.