No, Kamala Harris didn’t scrub all images from her Instagram account

Is Vice President Kamala Harris in her “Reputation” era? No, but viral Instagram posts claim the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee is slithering in the aftermath of her election loss.

“Kamala Harris has cleared her Instagram account and cryptically posted 3 videos of a snake,” a Nov. 7 Instagram photo that was a screenshot of an X post said. The post shows a screenshot of an Instagram account with Harris’ username, showing the account has 19.6 million followers but follows no accounts.

We saw similar claims on X.

The Instagram photo was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Threads and Instagram.)

But this screenshot is not of Harris’ Instagram account, which has neither scrubbed all of its photos and videos nor posted videos of three snakes. Harris’ account still has more than 5,200 posts and has continued to post photos of her even after she conceded defeat in the 2024 presidential election.

An X account on which the viral screenshot seems to have originated acknowledged it was a joke:”I thought it would go without saying … This is a joke! It is not real! Do not get your news off Twitter!!” 

But other social media users shared the screenshot without context about the joke.

The narrative is connected to a real social media cleanse by Taylor Swift. In 2017, the singer removed all posts on her social media accounts and shared a cryptic video of a snake to promote her album “Reputation.” 

The X user who first shared the screenshot also said it was an altered photo of Swift’s Instagram account in 2017. Some social media users had earlier likened Swift to a snake after public feuds with DJ Calvin Harris and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. Swift posted the snake videos because of that feud.

Swift endorsed Harris for president in September.

We rate the claim that Harris cleared her Instagram account and posted snake videos False.

By

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu

Staff writer

November 12, 2024

Truth-o-meter Ruling

False

IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT

• Vice President Kamala Harris’ Instagram account didn’t remove all posts and didn’t post three videos of a snake.

• The screenshot saying she did originated as a joke, according to an X account that first shared it. It refers to singer Taylor Swift’s 2017 cleanse of her social media pages and website.

Statement

Vice President Kamala Harris “has cleared her Instagram account and cryptically posted 3 videos of a snake.”

Context

a photo

Speaker/Target

Speaker: Instagram posts

Statement Date

November 7, 2024