Social media giant Meta will be paying around $25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by US President Donald Trump for suspending his Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2021. Several social media platforms had blocked Trump’s accounts following the January 6 incident on Capitol Hills after the presidential elections were lost by Trump.
After the suspension of his Meta accounts, Donald Trump sued Meta alleging a violation of the First Amendment which guarantees free speech, along with some other charges. Trump had alleged that by suspending his accounts, Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg indulged in “impermissible censorship”.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed the development, saying that $22 million of the settlement amount will go toward a fund for Trump’s presidential library. The rest will be paid towards legal fees and other relevant costs. As part of the settlement, Meta won’t admit to any wrongdoing.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump signed the settlement in the Oval Office on Wednesday. As per reports, Zuckerberg wrote a letter to a judge in Northern California that “parties have reached an agreement” in the case, saying that both sides will soon ask for the suit to be dismissed.
The settlement comes amid the attempts by the company and Mark Zuckerberg to improve the relationship with the president after the bitter episode of suspending the account of the then-former president. Mark Zuckerberg met Trump several times since 2023, and reportedly Trump had said that the lawsuit had to be dealt with before Zuckerberg could be “brought into the tent”.
Meta has made a U-turn on censorship policy since then and has announced the end of its third-party fact-checking system. Zuckerberg had acknowledged that the fact-checkers were too biased. Mark Zuckerberg also shared how the Biden administration in the US weaponised political censorship to curtail free speech on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
While Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended indefinitely, later as it became clear that he would return to the White House, the company reinstated the accounts in 2023.
Apart from Meta, Trump had also sued YouTube and Twitter (now 𝕏) for suspending his accounts. The case against Twitter was dismissed by a court, while the suit against YouTube owner Google was closed in 2023. Twitter has now been acquired and renamed X by Elon Musk, who is now part of the Trump administration. Both the 𝕏 and YouTube accounts of Trump have been restored.
Trump’s social media accounts were suspended by far-left executives of the platforms accusing him of spreading misinformation regarding the 2020 election results.
