Starting Wednesday, Meta says it will begin combining the Instagram accounts of the Second Lady of the United States, Usha Vance, and the former Second Gentleman of the United States, Doug Emhoff.
As a result, the 1.2 million people who were previously following the Instagram account of Kamala Harris’s husband, @secondgentleman46archive (recently archived by the government), will now be following J. D. Vance’s wife on her newly created account, @SLOTUS. As of the time of writing, her account has less than 66,000 followers.
“Following the White House creating an account for the Second Lady, we are transitioning the Second Gentleman account to @SLOTUS,” said a Meta spokesperson in a statement to TechCrunch. “This is consistent with our process for presidential transitions and with the process we followed for the President, VP, FLOTUS, and The White House accounts earlier this year.”
When Trump took office in January, a lot of users were confused as to why they were suddenly following President Trump on Facebook and Instagram when they hadn’t explicitly requested to do so. At the time, Meta explained this was part of a regular process in which White House social media accounts, including their followers, are handed over to the new administration when a new president takes office.
Usha Vance is obtaining the former Second Gentleman’s Instagram followers now because the White House only recently created her @SLOTUS account, according to Meta. The first post on the Second Lady’s Instagram account is dated March 10, and Meta says she does not have an official Facebook account at this time.
Be aware that if you try to unfollow @SLOTUS on Instagram, your request may not immediately go through.
Meta says it may “take some time” to process follow and unfollow requests around the @SLOTUS account during this transition. It seems likely that users flood Meta with a barrage of follow and unfollow requests in these account transitions, which slows things down.
Meta insists it never forces users to “auto-follow” accounts without a user’s consent. In this case, Meta says the White House itself controls these official accounts, and it’s simply assisting them in the presidential transition.
While these White House social media accounts change hands every four years, they tend to create widespread confusion every time. Many users forget they ever followed an official White House account in the first place, especially if they had done so four years ago when the previous administration took office.
However, it becomes much more evident which White House accounts you’re following when the new administration, which may not be the party you voted for, takes over.
