Meta Agrees To $25m Trump Settlement

Meta Platforms has agreed to pay $25 million (£20m) to settle a four-year-old lawsuit by US president Donald Trump over the suspension of his social media accounts on the company’s platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram.

The company filed a notice of the settlement in San Francisco federal court, where the case had been pending.

The company separately confirmed that the settlement involves a $25m payment, including a $22m charitable contribution to Trump’s planned presidential library and the balance going to legal fees and other plaintiffs.

The settlement does not require Meta to admit wrongdoing, the company said in a statement.

Charitable contribution

Trump filed the case against Meta several months after leaving office in 2021 over the suspension of his Meta accounts following the riots in the Capitol building on 6 January of that year.

The suspension limited Trump’s reach on social media during the final two weeks of his first term, and led him to create the Truth Social platform under his own media group.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on 7 January, 2021, that Trump’s refusal to condemn his supporters that had stormed into the Capitol showed he “intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden”.

Trump’s accounts were restored in February 2023.

Since Trump’s election last November, Zuckerberg has moved aggressively to court the president’s favour, visiting him in Florida, changing moderation policies to be more in line with Trump’s rhetoric and appointing a friend of Trump’s to Meta’s board, among other actions.

Litigation

Zuckerberg dined with Trump in Florida in November and the then president-elect brought up the subject of resolving the litigation at that time, leading to two months of negotiations, the Associated Press reported.

In December ABC News similarly said it would pay $15m to settle a dispute in which Trump said anchor George Stephanopoulos had defamed him.

The ABC News payment will also go to Trump’s presidential library, with the network also paying $1m in legal fees to the law firm of Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito.