Demi Lovato has expressed her frustrations at Meta after claiming to have had to unfollow Vice President JD Vance on Instagram 'twice today' amid allegations of 'shady business'.
Much has been said about the inauguration of President Donald Trump, with allegations of Nazi gestures and disputes with bishops taking up much of the news cycle in the first few days of Trump's second term.
Perhaps one of the most bizarre occurrences that has emerged after the new president took office though is reports that Instagram is 'forcing' users to follow both Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on the social media platform, despite seemingly multiple attempts to unfollow their accounts.
Most high profile of these reports comes from singer and actress Demi Lovato, who took to her Instagram stories to rant about the app's parent company Meta, as reported by Pop Crave:
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"I have unfollowed this guy twice today," Lovato details alongside a screenshot of Vance's Instagram profile, adding: "Shady f*cking business meta."
This appears to be under the allegation that Instagram is 'forcing' its users to follow the accounts despite attempts to manually unfollow, which is handily supported by the fact that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg has donated a handsome sum to Trump's administration and was one of the many billionaires to attend the inauguration.
One theory that might explain why many have found themselves following both Vance and Trump is that the accounts in question are not their personal ones, but instead the official ones used by the governmental positions.
For example, if you were following Joe Biden or Kamala Harris on Instagram before, you will now be following Trump and Vance respectively, despite the accounts looking as if they were personally created by the individuals.
This is easily identified by the accounts' handles, which are 'vp' and 'potus', as opposed to their personal accounts which are under 'jdvance' and 'realdonaldtrump'.
What does seem rather fishy though is the seeming inability to unfollow either account though. Some accounts on X have pointed out that you can get around this odd 'glitch' by blocking the accounts: "Meta has made millions of people automatically follow JD Vance on Instagram, myself included. Even liberal celebrities and democratic organizations that I follow have followed him. PLEASE GO CHECK AND BLOCK."
This method, like unfollowing, still doesn't seem to work though, as some users have reported: "Soooo after I literally blocked the Vance Insta account on Monday I now see it's unblocked and in my followers list??? lmao."
If this is the case then it's understandable that many remain concerned over the future of apps like Instagram after their owners have expressed support for Trump, especially after reports from the BBC indicate that search results for 'Democrat' have also been hidden and that Meta have made changes to their hate speech guidelines.
One user has gone as far to predict the rise of alternative, 'phoenix' apps like Bluesky after actions like this become more common: "They're gonna make these apps unusable to the point an indie app is gonna take over and get users while they hopefully lose stocks."
It's unclear whether more instances like tis will continue to arise, but with other apps like TikTok expressing direct appreciation for the President, some argue now that the distinction between social media and the government is less clear than ever before.