By BECKY RUTHERFORD 
Los Alamos
For the Los Alamos Daily Post

I have seen a ton of claims over the past week on Facebook and Instagram from users who were shocked to find that they had been “forced” to follow Trump, Vance, Melania, and other members of the new administration.

This seemed way too “big brother” creepy to be real, and I had checked to see if I was in fact suddenly following any of them and I was not. Reassured, I carried on, until I saw this in my news feed.

Image from POTUS official Facebook page

I most definitely did not follow him, and I was a bit creeped out given the posts about users being forced to follow him. Is Meta forcing users to follow Trump and others from the new administration? Of course not. This is just yet another social media panic hoax, similar to the privacy hoax copy and paste scams “I hereby revoke all rights to my pictures, from Facebook”, etc. kind of thing.

Example Facebook copy paste privacy hoax scam

So what really happened, and why was I suddenly following Trump? As it turns out, it’s not so sinister. The POTUS, and the VP as well as the First Lady all have official Facebook accounts.

With each administration change, the Facebook and Instagram accounts of the previous administration are archived, as well as the posts. These followers are then transferred to the new official accounts.

Image of Trump’s official Facebook page- not the POTUS page

Image of the Trump POTUS official presidential page. If you were previously following Biden, you were automatically transferred over to this new page.

Nothing weird was going on, if you had liked or followed anyone from the previous administration you were simply transferred over to the new official account of Trump, Vance and the First Lady. If you don’t wish to follow or like, simply unfollow, unlike, or block the accounts.

Remember when you see posts like these on social media always take them with a grain of salt, chances are it’s a scam or misunderstanding.