Meta will pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit with Donald Trump over his 2021 Facebook suspension

Meta has agreed to pay President Donald Trump $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit stemming from the social network’s decision to suspend Trump's Facebook account following the riots at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

According to The Wall Street Journal, there had been “little activity” surrounding the lawsuit until Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg flew to Mar-a-Lago following the election. “Toward the end of the November dinner, Trump raised the matter of the lawsuit,” The Journal reports. “The president signaled that the litigation had to be resolved before Zuckerberg could be ‘brought into the tent.’” Much of the settlement will reportedly go toward funding Trump's presidential library.

Settling the lawsuit is the latest step Zuckerberg and Meta have taken to appease Trump, who at one point during the campaign threatened to imprison the Facebook founder for “plotting” against him. Following the election, Zuckerberg ended Meta’s longtime fact-checking program and rolled back content moderation standards that prohibited dehumanizing language and slurs targeting immigrants and LGBTQ people. He also ended corporate diversity programs and added Trump backer and UFC CEO Dana White to Meta’s board. Zuckerberg had a prominent seat at Trump’s inauguration, alongside other tech CEOs.

News of Meta’s settlement broke just as the company released its latest earnings results. During a call with analysts, Zuckerberg said that 2025 was “going to be a big year for redefining our relationship with governments.” Though he didn’t mention Trump by name, he said that “we now have a US Administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad.”

Zuckerberg, who earlier this week said the company would spend as much as $65 billion on AI investments this year, predicted that Meta AI would reach 1 billion users in 2025. He also commented on the rise of DeepSeek, an open-source AI assistant from China, saying that it’s “strengthened our conviction” about open source AI. “One of the things that we're talking about, is there's going to be an open source standard globally,” he said. “And I think for own national advantage, it's important that it's an American standard.”

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