What a fucking idiotic shitstorm entirely of their own making.
Meta deserves all the shit they get for this transparent act of kowtowing.
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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They will get zero shit and there will be no repercussions or consequences and Zuckerberg knows that
It sure looks like they're getting shit right now - I don't disagree with your cynicism about long term effects though. If everyone "outraged" by this continues to use their service this will have very little effect on them in the long term.
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"Technical problems."
"Following" and "unfollowing" are pretty basic aspects of the service. How interesting that the "technical problems" only have to do with these specific accounts.
Anything under Meta (FB, Insta, WhatsApp), Twitter/X, TikTok - you should be considering these to be fascist mouthpieces and interpret information gained through them with that lens.
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After a decade of wondering why my friends still used Instagram, they're finally talking about uninstalling it this week. So I'm all for these new features, keep em coming zuck!
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How long before Zuckerberg does the Nazi salute on stage too?
I don't think he will, but solely because he happens to be Jewish. Same reason Ben Shapiro won't. Because ultimately these are the sort of people who think the nazis are bad not because of what they believed or did, but because of who they targeted.
Damn, I like the way you put that. Very succinct.
I've been saying it about Shapiro and Prager for years. Anyone can be a fascist regardless of background, it's important to acknowledge the groups that were targeted and to understand that they will likely be targeted again, but acting like Jewish people, queer people, roma, etc are specially pure and good or like Germans, Italians, Japanese, and Spaniards are specially capable of evil is thinking in the lines fascism wants you to.
Fascism is wrong and evil because the ideas behind it are foolish and cruel. It turns class politics into identity politics for powerful identities (organizing as an identity isn't bad when it's the vulnerable, there's a huge difference between the deaf organizing as the deaf and the hearing organizing as the hearing). It proposes simplistic and contradictory narratives that point towards destruction rather than construction, towards hate rather than love, and towards selfishness rather than empathy. It's the worst aspects of human nature
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I give it 2 years depending on if he wants to keep his job or not and how little he thinks his soul is worth
He's long, long past any sentimentality about his "soul". Musk is insane, but Zuckerberg is calculating. He wouldn't show up on stage doing a salute unless he knows he stands to gain.
Exactly. I'm saying if Trump makes the guy and the other billionaires do it and he wants to keep his job, he might do it.
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Just leave Instagram. The quickest way to get rid of a stalking "president".
At this point one should ask if they are trying to make people quit meta on purpose.
Honestly makes me wonder the same. They might be trying to make it a more effective echo chamber
“Some people…” most people I know have been forced to follow POTUS or VP and cannot unfollow. Finally got my wife to delete her accounts
That sounds like a major liability. Think of the hospital bills for all the eye bleaching related injuries if Donnie started posting beach pics...
Trump and his cronies are gonna try and use social media like Hitler used the radio. He want his voice in the homes of every ~~German~~ American.
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Obviously, fuck Meta, but....
“People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the President, Vice President or First Lady,” he wrote on Threads. “Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those Pages changes.
“This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition. It may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands.”
That sounds like a plausible explanation. If you followed when Biden was president, that same account is now Trump's.
Which means there are likely millions of users either unfollowing or following the account since Monday. I'd be surprised if anyone wanted to hear from both Biden and now trump.
I couldn't find an actual article, but here's people complaining about Instagram doing the same thing four years ago:
Old.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/l1y2je/unfollowed_and_blocked_the_white_house_account/
Hell, 4 years ago Biden was bitching that Twitter didn't do this
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/22/politics/biden-twitter-white-house-accounts/index.html
I have heard from at least one person who deliberately unfollowed before Monday who suddenly was following again after the changeover. Maybe there's technical difficulties there, but it's a bad look for sure.
There's just nothing to gain from intentional fuckery tho, and a very plausible reason.
Even if they "unfollowed" it might not have stuck and if they refreshed it still would have been there.
Things changing on the GUI but not where it actually matters is literally the issue here...
So I 100% believe a bunch of people experienced what you're saying.
They're just confusing client side GUI with server side database.
I definitely would consider currying favor with the incoming administration a potential gain, which is why even if this is truly a technical error, so many people would believe otherwise considering the messaging from Meta these past few weeks. Regardless of intentions, Meta has failed in their user experience at a time when many people are evaluating if these platforms are worth the trouble- purely as a tech business that seems like quite the misstep. Of course, the truth is that it doesn't matter, we already know Meta is bowing to right wing pressure and actively choosing to allow harm to LGBTQ+, women, and other minorities on their platforms, and they shouldn't get plausible deniability for their mistakes.
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Just kill the account then
It would probably work if they just deleted their accounts.
False! Everyone can unfollow. There's just a few more steps to delete your account. I was able to do it without issue.
This is so fucked up. Why anyone would use meta now is beyond me
Sounds like a good reason to abandon instagram.
How long before they start making posts and adding likes in your name?
Good thing i don't have an account on there. I do have a facebook account and checked to see if i I was set follow their pages and Im not. Might have something to so with not following any pages or even really logging in but a fee times a year when my wife pesters about checking my notifications or certain posts from family members
Worth noting that the follow option on your account likely isn’t accurate. That’s a large part of the complaints; I didn’t follow the potus or vp accounts when looking at it on my own page, but my friend saw that I was following them via the “followed by [friend’s name] +[#] more” option. Like when you tap that, it allows you to see which of your mutual friends follow the account. And I showed up on that list. On my own account page, it didn’t show that I was following them. The button said “Follow” so I couldn’t unfollow them.
Here is the vp page from my perspective. Notice that I’m not following it, and therefore can’t unfollow it:
Now here’s my friend’s “your mutual friends follow this account” list, which shows me as a follower:
I had to restrict the vp account, which then updated the “Follow” button into an “unfollow” button. But the fact that I had to restrict the account before I was allowed to unfollow it (because I was being forced to shadow-follow the account) is what people have issues with.
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