Starting Wednesday, Meta says it will begin a combination of the Instagram accounts of Usha Vance, the second woman in the US, and former American second gentleman, Doug Emov.
As a result, the 1.2 million people who previously tracked the Instagram account of Kamala Harris’ husband @seconggentleman46archive (recently archived by the government) are following JD Vance’s wife on her newly created account @slotus. At the time of writing, her account has fewer than 66,000 followers.
“After the White House created an account for the Second Lady, we are moving our second gentleman account to @slotus,” a Meta spokesman said in a statement to TechCrunch. “This coincides with our process for the presidential transition and the process we followed earlier this year for the President, VP, Flotus and the White House accounts.”
When Trump took office in January, many users were confused as to why he suddenly tracked President Trump on Facebook and Instagram when he didn’t explicitly request it. At the time, Meta explained that this was part of the regular process by which social media accounts involving followers were handed over to the new administration when a new president takes office.
According to Meta, Usha Vance has gained Instagram followers for his former gentlemen, as the White House just recently created a @Slotus account. The first post on the Second Lady’s Instagram account dated March 10th, and Meta said he does not officially have a Facebook account at this time.
Please note that if you try to unlock @slotus on Instagram, the request does not pass immediately.
Meta says it could be “time-consuming” to process follow and unfollow around your @slotus account during this migration. Users seem to be flooding meta with a barrage of follow requests and barrage of follow requests in these account migrations, slowing things down.
Meta claims that they will never force users to “auto-follow” accounts without their consent. In this case, Meta says the White House itself controls these official accounts and is only helping the president move.
These White House social media accounts change hands every four years, but each time they tend to cause widespread confusion. Many users have forgotten that they followed the official White House account in the first place, especially if they did so four years before the previous administration took office.
But it becomes clearer how the White House you follow explains when a new administration, which may not be the party you voted for, takes over.