Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has agreed to pay Meta $25 million to settle a lawsuit that the company filed against it for suspending his accounts following the 2021 US Capitol attack.
According to reports, $ 22 million would be used to pay for Trump’s presidential library while the remaining $ 2 million would be used for legal fees and other litigants, confirming the settlement, a Meta spokesman confirmed the agreement.
Following a speech in which he attributed his electoral defeat to widespread fraud, his supporters launched an uprising against his supporters in 2021, when Meta’s Facebook and Instagram suspended his accounts.
Trump said he had been wrongfully censored, and went on to file lawsuits against Twitter (since renamed X), Facebook, Google, and their chief executives in July 2021, alleging that they unlawfully silenced conservative viewpoints.
But he has recently courted tech titans, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the new X owner, Elon Musk, both of whom attended Trump’s presidential inauguration last week in Washington, DC.
Zuckerberg was among several billionaires granted prime seating during Trump’s swearing-in last week. He has also tweaked Meta’s policies, announcing a rollback of fact-checking and moderation operations on the company’s apps, which include Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
Meta’s diversity, equity and inclusion programmes were also halted in January.
The social media giant has , named , prominent Republican Joel Kaplan as its chief global affairs officer and , elected , Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and close friend of Trump, to its board.
In a departure from its past practice, Meta went on to announce a $1m contribution to Trump’s inaugural fund back in December.
Source: Aljazeera
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