Not able to unfollow POTUS Donald Trump and VP JD Vance's accounts on Instagram? You aren't alone

Update 23/01/25 – 09:44 am (IST): Meta’s Communication Director, Andy Stone, took to Threads to clarify that during the transition of the POTUS, VP, and other White House-managed accounts from the previous administration to the new administration, “it may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands.”

This likely explains why it was taking multiple attempts to unfollow the POTUS and VP accounts. However, what it doesn’t explain is how those accounts gained millions of followers in the span of a few hours. So it seems we’ll have to wait and see if there’s any further explanation.

Original article published on January 22, 2025, follows:

Many Instagram users are up in arms after discovering they can’t seem to unfollow President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s accounts. Reports have poured in from frustrated users who say they’ve blocked or unfollowed the accounts multiple times, only to find themselves still following them later.

A growing number of users on Reddit and X are calling out what they believe to be “forced follows.” One Reddit user, MediumIced, shared their experience of blocking the accounts five times in one day, only to have them reappear in their feed. Another user, userkrg, said they noticed the @POTUS account reappearing even after being blocked, with Instagram somehow following it from their account again. Some have even claimed these accounts were automatically added to their following list without consent.

And it’s not just the average Joe facing the problem. Apparently, Instagram repeatedly made Demi Lovato follow VP JD Vance’s account, even after she tried unfollowing it multiple times. Here’s a screenshot of a post on her Instagram Story:

“They did the same thing with Rihanna when she literally despises Donald Trump,” one commenter noted. Many users feel that this isn’t just a glitch. “At 2 PM, only 38 people I follow were following the VP account. By 4 PM, that number jumped to over 100,” wrote a user on Reddit. Similar complaints are flooding social media, with screenshots showing suspicious spikes in follower counts for both Trump and Vance. This has led some to accuse Meta of boosting the accounts artificially.

At the time of this writing, the VP account has 16.8 million followers. This means a few hundred thousand people unfollowed the account in around 5-6 hours, judging by the screenshot shared above. It’s highly unlikely people willfully followed the VP account only to unfollow it again a few hours later. So there has to be something else going on here.

Meta hasn’t directly addressed these specific complaints about the inability to unfollow, but the company’s spokesperson earlier addressed a concern about accounts automatically following Presiden Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Facebook. Additionally, hashtags like #Democrat and #DNC were temporarily flagged as sensitive on Instagram. While Meta claimed the hashtag issue was an error, many aren’t convinced these incidents are unrelated.

While some claim the issue stems from the automatic transfer of official accounts when a new administration takes office, others are skeptical. Speculation that Meta might be deliberately inflating follower numbers for political accounts is fueling the ongoing frustration.

All we can do is wait for an official explanation for these strange developments on Meta’s platforms following the change in presidency. We’ll update the article if there are any further developments. Feel free to drop a comment below letting us know if you experienced similar issues or not.