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Meta has agreed to shell out $25 million to settle a lawsuit with Donald Trump. The lawsuit dates back to 2021, when Trump took legal action against the social media giant after they suspended his accounts following the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. The settlement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and later confirmed to ReadWrite by a Meta spokesperson.
According to the report, $22 million of the settlement will go toward funding Trump’s presidential library, while the rest will cover legal fees and payments to other plaintiffs involved in the case. Meta isn’t admitting to any wrongdoing as part of the deal. Trump officially signed the agreement on Wednesday (Jan. 29) from the Oval Office.
But since Trump’s re-election, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been warming up to the new administration. Zuckerberg was present at the 47th president’s inauguration and even contributed $1 million to the inaugural fund. After the election, he also made a trip to Mar-a-Lago in November to meet with Trump.
What do Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, & Uber have in common?
1. They or their CEOs gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
2. And they’re all under scrutiny from federal regulators for antitrust/privacy violations or harms to workers/consumers/competition.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 24, 2025
The Journal cites Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren as saying: “It looks like a bribe and a signal to every company that corruption is the name of the game.
“After Meta pays to play, what does Mark Zuckerberg expect as a return on this investment?”
Tech firms attempt make amends with Trump
After being voted out of office, Trump launched a series of lawsuits in July 2021 against social media companies that had suspended his accounts. The Meta lawsuit was just one of them as he also took legal action against Twitter (now X) and YouTube, along with their top executives. A federal judge eventually threw out the Twitter case, and the lawsuit against Google was administratively closed in 2023, though there’s still a chance it could be reopened.
At the time, Zuckerberg said the company came to the decision to suspend Trump’s account because, “we believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”
Since then, tech firms have attempted to repair their relationships with the 47th president, with executives, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, seen standing behind him during his inauguration. Google confirmed this week that it will change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America following the executive order signed by Trump.
ReadWrite has reached out to Meta for comment.
Featured image: Grok
