 "Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) and US President Donald Trump. Image Credit: Reuters")
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by US President Donald Trump. The Republican firebrand sued the social media giant and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2021 over the suspension of his accounts following the January 6 attack.
In July 2024, Meta lifted the final restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram profiles leading up to the presidential race, which he ultimately won. According to the Wall Street Journal, around $22 million of the settlement money will go to a fund for Trump’s presidential library. The rest will be used to cover the legal fees the president incurred while pursuing the case.
It is pertinent to note that one of the conditions of the settlement is that Meta will not admit to any sort of wrongdoing in the matter. When the company suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, Meta said that they would ban him from the platform for at least two years.
Zuckerberg patched things with Trump
Soon after Trump’s win in the November 5 polls, Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago to meet the business-mogul-turned politician. Many considered the meeting as an indication of the thwarting of animosities between the two leaders.
Things became even more apparent the very next month when Meta donated $1m to an inauguration fund for Trump. Not only this, Zuckerberg was also a guest at Trump’s indoor inauguration ceremony a the US Capitol. He was seated among other global billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
However, things were not this Hunky Dory between Trump and Zuckerberg. For years, Trump had been highly critical of The Meta CEO, often referring to his social media platforms as “anti-Trump”. As his account was banned, the president referred to Facebook as an “enemy of the people” in March 2024.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsApart from this, On Wednesday, Meta defended its $65bn investment in artificial intelligence (AI) after tech stocks were rocked in the wake of Chinese AI app DeepSeek’s sudden rise. Zuckerberg told investors that there was a lot to learn from DeepSeek, but it was too soon to have “a really strong opinion” about how the app will contribute to the future of AI.
“If anything, I think the recent news has only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on,” he added. Multiple US tech stocks sank this week after DeepSeek surged in popularity.
With inputs from agencies.