Peter Griffin: BusinessDesk tech columnist explains why more Facebook and Instagram accounts are auto-following Trump

Facebook and Instagram users have recently noticed their accounts have started following President Donald Trump, his wife Melania and Vice President JD Vance without their prior knowledge.

Gracie Abrams and Demi Lovato are among the famous names who have posted complaints Meta won't let them unfollow these accounts, with Abrams eventually being forced to block them altogether. 

Others have also noticed the hashtag #Democrat was blocked on Instagram this week.

BusinessDesk tech columnist Peter Griffin says Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is among the tech billionaires who have openly voiced support for Trump - but it's more likely to be a glitch than a conspiracy.

"A lot of people on Facebook were obviously following the Facebook accounts of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and others - they've been handed over to the new administration, and it looks as though people are suddenly following the President and the posts from the new administration, but it's a change of people." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Right, Some users of Facebook and Instagram are complaining that
their accounts have randomly started following Donald Trump. Some accounts
have started following Millennia, and now there's Vice president j
d Vance. Singers Demi Lavata, Levato, excuse me, Demmie Levato
and Gracy Adams have posted complaints about this and complained
the meta won't let them unfollow them. In fact, they

(00:24):
turn off the whole thing. They turn off that they
got right, they get rid of the entire social media platform.
They go back on and look at that, it's back
there again. So how the hell is this happening? Peter
Griffin is our tech commentator and joins us now.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hello, good evening, Andrew. So why well, look, it's not
that suddenly the Trump administration has forced everyone to follow
the president and the vice president. What's happened is that
a lot of people on Facebook were obviously following the
Facebook accounts off Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and others. They've

(01:04):
been handed over to the new administration. So it looks
as though suddenly people are following the president and new
posted coming from that administration. But it's a change of people,
not a change of the office. What is interesting is
that then people have gone, ooh, I don't want to
be following Trump. They've tried to unfollow him, and something's

(01:26):
gone wrong there. So that seems to be a technical issue,
perhaps because so many people have tried to unfollow some
of these accounts at the same time, but it shouldn't
take any longer than a couple hours for that to resolve.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Could the technical issue be that Mark Zuckerberg is currying
favor with Donald Trump?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Look, I doubt it that would That would really be
going too far. But what we have seen obviously this
week is the bending off the knee off the tech
billionaires to Trump, and Zuckerberg in particular has been the
first to really start changing policies at his company to
suit the new new administration. So it's a nice conspiracy theory,

(02:06):
but I'd put it down to technical gremlins.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Okay. And so just to repeat, if you followed potus
or if you follow the first lady and they all
had their own Facebook accounts, of course they've changed. Therefore
you end out following uh, Donald Millennia and JD Vance.
What is Meta saying about all of this, about why
the people are struggling to unfollow them.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Uh yeah, as far as I know, they've said that
it should be an automatic process. If not, try it,
try it again. So look, they do this all the time.
They've got, you know, all this cloud infrastructure around the world,
all this great technology, but often, you know, their platform
just breaks. So I think it will be a matter
of that they'll be scrambling to fix it. But you know,

(02:54):
the bigger issue I think with Meta at the moment
is the announcement they made a couple of weeks ago
that they're doing away with fact checking on the platform,
first in the US, then they will stop doing that internationally.
They used to partner with in some cases news organizations
to check some of the real viral hoaxes and the
real nasty misinformation on their platform. So they're giving up

(03:17):
on that. They're replacing that with what's called community notes,
which must uses on Twitter, which is effectively saying we'll
just let the community decide what is true and what's not.
And the reality is that's a lot cheaper to do,
and it really is philosophically for Zuckerberg from day one,
when he set up Facebook back in two thousand and four,

(03:37):
he did not want to be the arbiter of truth
on that platform. He wanted it to be a platform
where anyone could say what they want. So he philosophically
believes and freedom of speech, you know, in an absolutist
sort of way, not really cognizant of the fact that
he's got four or five billion people on this platform
and misinformation does a lot of hard I spreading on

(03:59):
that platform.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, absolutely, well we all know that. But you know, ah,
the battle of virtue. So Dow, Look, there's another issue.
People have been saying that the hashtag hashtag democrat was
also being blocked on Instagram this week. Is that true
and what is that about?

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Well, you know, again, that would be I would put
down to a technical issue rather than a deliberate Look,
if Zuckerberg is saying, hey, it's free reign on freedom
of speech, now, you know, hashtag democrat is not going
to be a particular issue. So I would suggest, you know,
when you have a change of administration like this, a

(04:40):
lot of people were going on to social media, spiking
the traffic and they're having problems related to that, rather
than you know, Zuckerberg sitting in his office in Silicon
Valley going I'm going to stick it to the Democrats
now that Trump's in charge. I just don't think there's
enough iff evidence to stack that up again. I just
put it down to chnical problems.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Peter Griffin always loving to talk to you, and I
thank you for your time Today News.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
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