Several viral Facebook posts claim that accounts are being forced to follow members of the new presidential administration. “Are you automatically following any of these pages without your consent? They are all new pages, created January 12, 2025,” reads one version of the post, which includes links to official Facebook accounts for Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Melania Trump, and the White House. “Freedom of speech? I think not,” it continues.
The claim is false. These official accounts belong to the White House, meaning they change whenever a new administration takes over.
Users who suddenly find themselves following Trump, Vance, the first lady, or Trump’s White House most likely liked or followed the account when they belonged to a previous administration. Archived versions of the facebook.com/POTUS webpage show that it has been passed from one president to the next since at least 2017 when the page transitioned from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. The page similarly shifted to Joe Biden following his inauguration in January 2021, and again to Trump after his inauguration earlier this week.
Andy Stone, Meta’s communications director, confirmed yesterday that the accounts change depending on who is in office. “A reminder: the Facebook.com/POTUS and Facebook.com/WhiteHouse accounts are managed by the White House,” he wrote in a Threads post. “They change when the occupant of the White House changes.”
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