Users are falsely claiming Meta automatically signed them up to follow the Donald Trump Facebook page without their consent.
If you happily followed President Joe Biden on Facebook, get ready for a shock! You are now following President Donald Trump on Facebook. Some users complained about an apparent conspiracy. They accused Meta of “force-feeding” them the Trump Facebook page without their consent.
I can understand the initial reaction: I’m sure most who followed Biden wouldn’t want to follow Trump. I’m sure most who followed Trump in 2021 were furious about finding that they were following Biden.
I understand the displeasure some feel about Facebook, Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Weeks before the inauguration, Zuckerberg announced Meta was ending a fact-check program designed to combat misinformation. Depending on how you look at the current state of political affairs, you may well believe that of all times, this is a bad one to suspend fact-checking efforts.
There’s also a growing resentment of “oligarchs,” a word people are throwing around left and right. (I’m convinced at least half of the people who started working it into their daily rants couldn’t define it if their lives depended on it.)
A conspiracy theory is born
I saw several users quickly accuse Facebook of “magically” making them follow the Trump Facebook page.
Some, like a grassroots Michigan organization, took to X to complain.
“Their latest move reeks of desperation—forcing users to follow Trump is a blatant violation of user autonomy,” the grassroots organization Distill Social said on X. “Zuckerberg’s pandering to political power undermines the very essence of free choice on social media.”
They’re just one account of many on multiple platforms making this type of claim. I’ve seen some people quickly leaving Facebook altogether over such an outrage.
Maybe it’s time to step away from the computer, have a donut, and take a few breaths. In fact, it’s easy to disprove this particular “conspiracy theory.”
Just look at the page URL
Those who say they’re shocked to find they’re following the Trump Facebook page seem to forget one key point. They didn’t follow the Biden Facebook page. They followed the U.S. president’s Facebook page.
Check out the Trump Facebook page URL:
https://www.facebook.com/POTUS
POTUS is a familiar abbreviation for “President of the United States.” Journalists see it every single day, even if the general public doesn’t.
If this were Trump’s personal Facebook page, do you really think he wouldn’t want the URL to be something like “Trump47” or “DonaldTrumpisBack” or “TrumpMAGA2024”? Can you imagine Trump personally creating anything that didn’t have his name in the URL?
These people who are “outraged” at the thought of being “forced” to follow Trump’s page forget that they had to have previously followed that “POTUS” page. At that time, the page might have been titled “President Joe Biden.” But the URL was that POTUS URL.
When the White House changes hands, the POTUS page likewise switches to the new president. When that happens, the previous content is also stripped and the new president has a “clean slate.”
If former Vice President Kamala Harris had beaten Trump, that page would have been titled “President Kamala Harris.” Biden’s posts likely would have been cleared there, too.
A new president doesn’t keep an old president’s posts. I can’t recall that happening since the POTUS page first appeared.
It’s the same with the White House Facebook page. The new administration — or Meta itself — blanks out the page when it transfer to the new administration.
If you followed the president page at some point when Biden was in office, you’re still following the page, even though it has officially changed hands. Facebook never automatically dumps a page’s followers when it changes hands.
That way, the existing followers who find themselves following the leader they don’t like have the opportunity to throw a temper tantrum.
And who doesn’t like a little political drama once in a while, right?
