Meta agreed to pay $ 25 million to set up a trial with Donald Trump. The prosecution was born in 2021 when Trump continued the social media company for suspending his accounts after the attack on January 6 against the American Capitol. The regulations were reported for the first time by the Wall Street Journal and was confirmed by a Meta spokesperson.
The majority of the regulations, $ 22 million, will go to a fund to pay the Trump’s presidential library, according to the Wall Street Journal. The rest will pay legal costs and will go to the other complainants listed in the case. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Trump’s trial against Facebook, which is now under parent company Meta, was one of the many social media companies following January 6. He also continued Youtube, Twitter (now renamed X) and the leaders of these companies. A federal judge rejected the prosecution against Twitter. The Google combination was closed in 2023, but has the possibility of being reopened.
Shortly after the Capitol insurrection, Facebook suspended Trump’s accounts. At the time, the president used the platform to distribute false complaints around electoral fraud and to say several times that he won the 2020 elections.
Facebook has broken up with its labor approach for political leaders and has updated its rules to allow the suspensions of legislators to be used in “exceptional cases” during periods of civil disorders and violence. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, said that the company came to the decision because: “We believe that the risks of allowing the President to continue using our service during this period are simply too big.”
The company gave Trump the maximum penalty under these rules, indefinitely suspending its Facebook and Instagram accounts.
“They should not be allowed to get away with this censorship and this siles, and finally, we will win. Our country can no longer take this abuse! Said Trump at the time. He said later: “The next time I am in the White House, there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It will be all the things!
A few months later, Facebook degraded the suspension to two years. And, at two years in 2023, the company restored Trump’s access to the platform. Twitter and YouTube also allowed Trump to return to their platforms.
Zuckerberg has now been on the right side of Trump. He met the president several times in the past two months and sat in the front row during the inauguration. Zuckerberg also organized a black tie party for the president during the inaugural celebrations.
Discussions on the trial regulations began in November when Zuckerberg dined with Trump in his field Mar-A-Lago in Florida, according to the Wall Street Journal. The president would have said that the trial was to be treated before Zuckerberg could be “brought into the tent”. The newspaper reported that Zuckerberg had returned to Mar-A-Lago in early January for a day mediation.
Shortly after this trip to Florida, Zuckerberg made a dramatic public announcement saying that Meta raised restrictions on her platform and allowing more political content. Echoing Trump’s words, he said that there was far too much censorship online and that “it is time to resume our roots”.
