Mark Zuckerberg Lobbies Trump To Avoid Antitrust Trial – Report

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta Platforms, is allegedly lobbying the Trump administration, amid a looming antitrust trial.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Zuckerberg is lobbying both President Trump and White House officials to agree to a settlement that would prevent Meta from facing an antitrust trial later this month.

Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly visited the White House three times since the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States on 20 January 2025. He also attended an undisclosed events at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, as well as Trump’s inauguration.

Antitrust trial

The issue stems from two acquisitions made over a decade ago.

Facebook had purchased Instagram for $1 billion back in 2012, and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014 – and both of those purchases were cleared of antitrust issues at the time by the FTC.

But in December 2020 in the last days of the first Donald Trump presidency, Meta’s Facebook was hit with two separate antitrust lawsuits over the WhatsApp, Instagram purchases.

One lawsuit came from the FTC, and a second lawsuit came from a coalition of attorneys general from 48 states and territories.

The FTC had alleged Meta acted illegally to maintain its social network monopoly.

At the time Facebook claimed the lawsuits were nothing other than ‘revisionist history’, and in March 2021 Meta asked US District Judge James Boasberg in the District of Columbia to dismiss the antitrust lawsuits.

In June 2021 Judge Boasberg dismissed the initial FTC complaint, when he ruled that the FTC had failed to define a plausible market that Facebook monopolised, and suggested too loose of a percentage of market share it owned.

But in November 2024 Meta suffered a notable setback, when a court ruled Meta must face a trial in the FTC lawsuit.

Last November Judge James Boasberg in Washington had largely denied Meta’s motion to end the case filed against Facebook in 2020.

But Judge Boasberg dismiss one FTC allegation, namely that Meta hampered third-party developers’ access to its platform.

Zuckerberg lobbying?

Now according to the Wall Street Journal, Meta and its representatives have met with President Trump and his senior advisers ahead of an 14 April Federal Trade Commission trial that could force the company to unwind its WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions.

What was discussed between Zuckerberg and the Trump administration is not clear, and the terms of any potential settlement are also not immediately clear.

“We regularly meet with policymakers to discuss issues impacting competitiveness, national security, and economic growth,” Meta told Reuters.

The White House meanwhile had no immediate comment and a spokesperson for the FTC declined to comment.

Bending the knee

The move comes as Mark Zuckerberg made a series of changes that shifted the social networking giant to the right, in favour of the Trump administration.

Meta for example has disbanded its diversity, equity and inclusion team, and also made a number of controversial changes impacting content moderation on the platform.

This includes Zuckerberg confirming in January that the platform was dropping third-party fact-checking in favour of Community Notes.

In March Zuckerberg announced the platform would begin testing its new Community Notes content moderation tool across Facebook, Instagram and Threads from Tuesday 18 March.

In addition, Meta also confirmed it is initially using X’s open source algorithm as the basis of its rating system – a move that will do little to limit the concerns of staff, campaigners and members of its Oversight Board.

Other moves have seen Zuckerberg donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, and Zuckerberg having dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.

Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg (former a UK deputy prime minister) also left Meta, and was replaced by Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican.

Meta Platforms also elected a close friend of Donald Trump to its board of directors, along with two others.