Instagram users have led a campaign to unfollow the new president and vice president en masse after backlash against the app’s parent company.
Users noticed the day after the inauguration, that many were unknowingly following Trump and Vance’s official accounts. The accounts, formerly used by President Biden (@potus) and Vice President Harris (@vp), transitioned over after January 20th.
Another user (@reneeroaming), told her fellow threads users “FYI, if you followed the Biden & Harris under their potus and vp Instagram accounts, you are now automatically following Trump & JD Vance. The account names were changed, along with the content, but the pre-existing followers remain the same.”
Instagram did in fact archive President Biden and Vice President Harris’s accounts as @potus46archive and @vp46archive after the transition.
As more and more users became aware they were following the new Trump and Vance accounts, their total followers plummeted.
On Tuesday, Trump’s new account had roughly 20.4 million followers. By Thursday night, it had lost more than 4 million followers, down to roughly 16 million. Vance also lost more than 2 million followers between Tuesday and Thursday, dropping from 17.5 million to 15.4 million.
The dramatic drop comes just three days into a second Trump administration already marred by protests and controversy. Within hours of taking power, Trump moved to pardon nearly 1,000 individuals charged for their roles in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Many of those pardons included individuals who beat police officers and leaders of white nationalist groups.
Trump also signed executive declarations hastening mass deportations and halting efforts to reduce the effects of climate change. The president also moved to take the United States out of the World Health Organization, just four years after the COVID-19 pandemic killed one million Americans.
Despite these and other controversial moves, Trump takes office with positive approval ratings. According to average polling conducted after he took office, roughly 53% of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance so far. Only 40% disapprove.