On Monday, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a\u00a0Threads<\/a>\u00a0post that the official President of the U.S. and White House accounts are managed by the White House. \u201cThey change when the occupant of the White House changes,\u201d Stone wrote.<\/p>\n This also applies to the first lady and vice president accounts.<\/p>\n Never miss a story \u2014 sign up for\u00a0PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter<\/a>\u00a0to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer\u200b\u200b, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.<\/strong><\/p>\n In a\u00a0follow-up Threads post<\/a>\u00a0on Wednesday, Jan. 22, Stone claimed that users “were not made to automatically follow” the official Facebook or Instagram accounts of Trump, Vance or first lady Melania Trump.<\/p>\n “Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those Pages changes,” Stone wrote. “This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition. It may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands.”<\/p>\n When Trump took office, the Facebook and Instagram accounts of now-former President Joe Biden were archived. For example, Biden\u2019s Instagram account is now @potus46archive, while Trump\u2019s official White House account is @potus. The @potus46archive account still has its followers, which were also transferred to the new @potus account.<\/p>\n On Facebook, Biden\u2019s archived page is called \u201cPresident Joe Biden Archived<\/a>\u201d and has 11 million followers. Trump\u2019s official page is called \u201cPresident Donald J. Trump<\/a>\u201d and also has 11 million followers.<\/p>\n Anyone can unfollow pages and profiles by clicking the three dots for the \u201cunfollow\u201d and \u201cblock\u201d options.<\/p>\n Katie Harbath, who was Facebook\u2019s director of public policy for global elections before leaving in 2021, explained how the transfers to new administrations worked in 2016 and 2021.<\/p>\n \u201cJust to back up what Andy is saying, my team set up the first ways of having to do this when Trump won in 2016 and we had to transfer the official accounts that President Obama’s team created when Facebook pages were first created,\u201d Harbath wrote on\u00a0Threads<\/a>, in response to Stone. \u201cSame was done during the transfer from Trump to Biden. The old ones go to an archived account and the followers remain, but the feed is wiped clean. Most platforms handle it this way.\u201d<\/p>\n Some Facebook and Instagram users claim they are following Trump and Vance\u2019s pages despite not having previously followed political pages. \u201cI was never following either. Happened to several friends as well,\u201d a\u00a0Threads user claimed<\/a>. Several Facebook users also claimed this happened in a\u00a0Reddit thread<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"President](\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/-GlhgsyR63peTp7GcJLa-zGMZRM=\/4000x0\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(1364x586:1366x588):format(webp)\/President-Donald-Trump-signs-executive-orders-in-the-Oval-Office-of-the-White-House-012125-d81813fca32b43fcbac77a843995a333.jpg\")
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