Facebook owner Meta has agreed to pay €25 million (€24.05 million) to settle a lawsuit with US President Donald Trump, who had his accounts on the social media platform and its sister Instagram banned in 2021.
Trump had been “indefinitely” banned from his accounts after the January 6 riots at the Capitol in Washington.
Approximately $22 million (€21.16 million) of the settlement funds would be used to support Trump’s future presidential library, according to The Wall Street Journal on January 29. The remaining sum would go towards paying legal bills and other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, it said.
Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, stated that the settlement did not require Meta to acknowledge any guilt.
At the time, the riots caused a backlash against Trump and his supporters.
Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta, said on his Facebook account: “The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.”
Zuckerberg had been a supporter of former president Biden and had donated large amounts of money to his initial election campaign. He was also accused of censoring conservatives on his platforms.
In the last election cycle, he appeared to have had a change of heart and sided with Trump, saying he wanted to restore free speech. He also suggested his companies had worked to serve the previous US administration.
After the election of Trump for a second term, Zuckerberg praised the US for what he said was the “strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world”.
He contrasted that with the European Union, where he claimed there was “an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there”.
He announced his companies would stop using third-party fact-checkers, claiming they were politically biased.
Meta, the parent company of social media giants including Instagram and Facebook, has said it planned to “restore free speech”. https://t.co/KDyVbGqKxk
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 7, 2025
On January 29, Meta, which also owns WhatsApp, reported a 59 per cent surge in full-year net income for 2024 to $62.36 billion (€59.97 billion), with fourth-quarter profits rising 49 per cent to $20.84 billion (€20.04 billion).
“We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritises American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad,” Zuckerberg said during Meta’s Q4 earnings call.
“And I’m optimistic about the progress and innovation this is going to unlock.”
