Meta, the parent company of popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, is denying that users were ever forced to follow the accounts of President Donald Trump and others in his administration following his inauguration."People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the President, Vice President or First Lady," said Andy Stone, Meta policy communications manager, in a statement. "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," he continued. "It may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands."RELATED STORY | Trump reportedly met with TikTok CEO as potential US ban loomsIt comes after some users on Facebook and Instagram complained following President Trump's inauguration, claiming they were forced to follow certain government-run accounts. But many were likely unaware they were already following those accounts when power shifted from the Biden administration to the Trump administration. The backlash against Meta also comes in the wake of the company announcing earlier this month that it was eliminating it's fact-checking team a move some claim was done to better align with the incoming president, who has often accused social media companies of unjust censorship.Instead, Meta said Facebook and Instagram will move toward a "Community Notes" model similar to what has been established on Elon Musk's X formerly Twitter allowing users to collaboratively add context to posts. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims the transition will "dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms."RELATED STORY | Mark Zuckerberg says the White House pressured Facebook to remove COVID-19-related content"It's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram," Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the changes, pointing to an increase in the politicization of censorship online and pressures from "governments and legacy media.""After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy," he added. "We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the U.S."