Meta has been ordered, in a court ruling, to Pay Donald Trump $25 Million to Settle Censorship Lawsuit He Filed Against them for Suspending his Social Media Accounts After the Jan 6th Capitol Hill Attack
Back in 2017, Trump labelled Facebook as "anti-Trump," and he had been extremely critical towards the platform and its owner, Mark Zuckerberg. Things escalated when the current U.S. president's accounts got banned. In March 2024, he further named it as "an enemy of the people."
In a book Trump released prior to his election, he expressed discontent over the more than $400 million Zuckerberg contributed in 2020 to assist local electoral offices amid the coronavirus crisis. Trump then stated that he was watching Zuckerberg keenly, threatening to throw him in prison the tech magnate for life.
Throughout this battle it appears he does not face issues with his new ally Elon Musk's Twitter (now referred to as X), unlike the time when Musk "permanently" barred the president from the platform. Before his accounts were reinstated, Musk conducted a survey on the site that narrowly supported the decision to reinstate him.
Until recently, attorneys for Meta had been fighting the lawsuit, which they claimed in legal documents was unfounded, arguing that "Meta and its CEOs are private entities" and the First Amendment exists solely to government censorship of expression.
Due to mounting pressure from conservative commentators and consumers Meta announced that it was ceasing its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, ranging itself with numerous other corporations retreating from such efforts. But Trump is still standing against such.
In addition to the concurrence between Meta and the president, the company appointed Trump associate and UFC president Dana White to its board of directors, shortly after promoting the most influential Republican figure within the company, Joel Kaplan, to the position of chief policy officer.
Meta has recently modified its content evaluation strategies on Facebook and Instagram, terminating collaborations with external fact-checkers in the United States and substituting them with user-generated “community notes,” while also reducing its automated moderation systems.
