Meta said starting Wednesday that it will begin combining the Instagram accounts of U.S. second lady Usha Vance and U.S. second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
As a result, 1.2 million people who previously followed Kamala Harris’s husband’s Instagram account, @secondgentleman46archive (Recently archived by the government), will now follow JD Vance’s wife, her newly created account, @slotus. As of the time of writing, she has less than 66,000 followers.
“After the White House created the Second Lady’s account, we transitioned the second gentleman’s account to @slotus,” a Messenger spokesman said in a statement to TechCrunch. “This is consistent with our presidential transition process and the procedures we followed for the President, Vice President, Flotus and White House accounts earlier this year.”
When Trump took office in January, many users were Confusing Regarding why they suddenly followed President Trump on Facebook and Instagram, they didn’t explicitly ask for it. At the time, Meta explained that it was part of a regular process in which White House social media accounts, including their followers, handed over to the new administration when the new president took office.
According to Meta, Usha Vance now gains an Instagram follower of the former Second Gentleman, as the White House only recently created her @slotus account. The first post on the Second Lady’s Instagram account was dated March 10, and Meta said she does not currently have an official Facebook account.
Please note that if you try to unfollow @Slotus on Instagram, your request may not be immediately passed.
Meta said that requests around @slotus accounts could “take some time” during this transition period. During these account transitions, users seem likely to flood and unfollow and unfollow requirements, which slows down.
META insists that it will never force users to “automatically follow” accounts without the user’s consent. In this case, Meta said the White House itself controls these official accounts, which is just assisting them in the presidential transition.
Although these White House social media accounts change hands every four years, they tend to cause widespread confusion every time. Many users forget that they once followed an official White House account first, especially if they did so when they took office four years ago.
But when the new administration may not be the new administration that the party you voted for takes over, which White House you are focusing on, it becomes even more obvious.
