Meta agrees to pay €24 million to settle lawsuit with Donald Trump over account suspension

Tech giant Meta has agreed to pay $25 million (nearly €24 million) to settle a legal dispute with US president Donald Trump after he sued the company for suspending his accounts following the January 6 riots at the US Capitol, according to three people familiar with the matter.

It's the latest instance of a large corporation settling litigation with the new president, who has threatened retribution on his critics and rivals.

It also comes as Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have joined other large technology companies trying to ingratiate themselves with the new Trump administration.

The people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity on Wednesday to discuss the agreement.

Two of the people said terms of the agreement include $22 million (€21 million) going to the non-profit that will become Trump's future presidential library. The balance will go to legal fees and other litigants, they said.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the settlement.

Zuckerberg visited Trump in November at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to try to mend fences with the incoming president, something other technology, business, and government officials have also done.

At the dinner, Trump brought up the litigation and suggested they try to resolve it, kick-starting two months of negotiations between the parties, the people said.

Trump's dispute over Meta 'censorship'

Meta also made a $1 million (€959,000) donation to Trump’s inaugural committee, and Zuckerberg was among several billionaires granted prime seating during Trump’s swearing-in last week in the Capitol Rotunda, along with Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who now owns the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Before Trump's inauguration, Meta announced it was dropping fact-checking on its platform - a longtime priority of Trump and his allies.

Trump filed the lawsuit months after his first term ended, calling the action by the social media companies "illegal, shameful censorship of the American people".

Twitter, Facebook, and Google are all private companies, and users must agree to their terms of service to use their products.

Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, social media platforms are allowed to moderate their services by removing posts that, for instance, are obscene or violate the services’ own standards, so long as they are acting in "good faith".

The law also generally exempts internet companies from liability for the material that users post.

But Trump and some other politicians have long argued that X, Facebook, and other social media platforms have abused that protection and should lose their immunity - or at least have it curtailed.

Trump's legal battles

The Meta settlement comes after ABC News agreed last month to pay $15 million (€14.3 million) toward Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.

The network also agreed to pay $1 million (€959,000) in legal fees to the law firm of Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito.

The settlement agreement describes ABC’s presidential library payment as a "charitable contribution," with the money earmarked for a non-profit organisation that is being established in connection with the yet-to-be-built library.

The president has been litigious in arguing that he has been targeted with unfair coverage by legacy media companies.

Trump has filed a lawsuit against CBS News over claims that the network aired a misleading interview with his 2024 opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, on the program '60 Minutes' that amounted to "partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference" intended to "mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales."

The programme denied the claims.

And he has a lawsuit against The Des Moines Register, the news outlet's parent company, Gannett, and the Iowa newspaper's pollster Ann Selzer, alleging they violated the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act by releasing a poll days before the November election that significantly understated his support in the state.

The newspaper and Selzer have denied wrongdoing.