Meta paying $25M to settle Trump lawsuit
WASHINGTON—Meta has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump against the company after it suspended his accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to three people familiar with the matter.
It’s the latest instance of a large corporation settling litigation with the president, who has threatened retribution on his critics and rivals, and comes as Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have joined other large technology companies in trying to ingratiate themselves with the new Trump administration.
The people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity Wednesday to discuss the agreement.
Two of the people said terms of the agreement include $22 million going to the nonprofit that will become Trump’s future presidential library. The balance will go to legal fees and other litigants, they said.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the settlement.
Visit to Trump
Zuckerberg visited Trump in November at his private Florida club to try to mend fences with the incoming president, something other technology, business and government officials have done as well.
At the dinner, Trump brought up the litigation and suggested they try to resolve it, kick-starting two months of negotiations between the parties, the people said.
Meta also made a $1-million donation to Trump’s inaugural committee, and Zuckerberg was among several billionaires granted prime seating during Trump’s swearing-in last week in the Capitol Rotunda, along with Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who now owns the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
‘Shameful censorship’
Before Trump’s inauguration, Meta announced it was dropping fact-checking on its platform—a longtime priority of Trump and his allies.
Trump filed the lawsuit months after his first term ended, calling the action by the social media companies “illegal, shameful censorship of the American people.”
Twitter, Facebook and Google are all private companies, and users must agree to their terms of service to use their products.
Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, social media platforms are allowed to moderate their services by removing posts that, for instance, are obscene or violate the services’ own standards, so long as they are acting in “good faith.”
The law also generally exempts internet companies from liability for the material that users post.
