Meta Agrees to Pay Trump $25 Million to Settle Facebook Censorship Lawsuit

Meta has agreed to pay about $25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump in 2021 over the platform’s suspension of his Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Feb 01, 2025

Meta has agreed to pay about $25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump in 2021 over the platform’s suspension of his Facebook and Instagram accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The majority of the settlement, $22 million, will go toward funding the Trump library. The rest will pay for legal fees and go to other plaintiffs in the case. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Anonymous sources familiar with the agreement told the Journal that Meta did not admit wrongdoing. However, outlets including The New York Times, NPR and others reported that the deal was a significant concession by a tech giant and a major victory for Trump.

The lawsuit against Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg was one of several Trump filed in July 2021 against social media companies and their chief executives over the suspension of his accounts on their platforms following the events of Jan. 6. Trump also filed class action lawsuits against Twitter and Google, alleging they violated his First Amendment rights by engaging in “impermissible censorship.”

The lawsuits sought to restore his social media accounts, along with punitive damages, and to ensure that others couldn’t be banned or flagged by the tech companies, according to Al Jazeera.

“Censorship runs rampant, and the result is a chilling effect cast over our nation’s pressing political, medical, social, and cultural discussions,” the Journal reported the complaint said.

The social media companies at the time said they suspended Trump’s accounts because he violated their rules by using the platforms to make false claims that he had won the 2020 election and to allege that widespread election fraud had taken place.

Twitter cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” following the events at the capitol, The Associated Press reported.

The Journal reported that at the time, Zuckerberg said the risks of allowing Trump to use the platforms “are simply too great,” and suspended the accounts.

Investigative journalist and political commentator Glenn Greenwald told Congress that when Trump was removed from the platforms, “defenders of this corporate censorship tried to minimize it by claiming the President could still be heard by giving speeches and holding press conferences.”

At the time, several leading news agencies also announced they wouldn’t carry Trump’s speeches live, but would only play select excerpts deemed “safe.”

“In response, numerous world leaders — including several who had clashed in the past with President Trump — expressed grave concerns about the dangers posed to democracy by the ability of tech monopolies to effectively remove even democratically elected leaders from the internet,” Greenwald said.

Trump was allowed back on Twitter in November 2022, after Elon Musk purchased the company. Meta and YouTube lifted their suspensions on Trump’s account in early 2023, after over a year.

A federal judge in May 2022 dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against Twitter, rejecting Trump’s claim that the platform had violated his First Amendment rights to free speech on the grounds that the rule applies only to the government, not private companies.

Trump’s suit claimed Meta suspended Trump’s accounts only after being pressured to do so by elected officials. Trump appealed the ruling, but the appeals court has not yet issued a ruling, according to the Journal. Three months later, a federal judge stayed the Facebook case, pending the outcome of the Twitter case.

The case sat dormant for about a year until Trump’s lawyers requested the judge lift the stay and allow them to file an amended complaint. In a November 2023 conference with Meta lawyers, Trump’s lawyers said they wanted to pursue the lawsuit because although the suspension had been lifted, it had lasting effects.

“Once you’re censored, you’re censored, and that’s it,” Trump’s lawyer John Q. Kelly said in the conference. “But when you’re restored, you have to watch your step. You’re sort of whistling in the dark every time you use Facebook and even approach matters that Facebook is not endeared to, such as our ex-president.”

However, they had not yet filed an amended complaint and there had been movement on the case until November 2024, when Zuckerberg met with Trump for dinner at Mar-a-Lago in the first of a series of overtures toward ingratiating himself with the new administration.

Trump and Zuckerberg met again in early January for mediation in the lawsuit.

In addition to visiting Trump, Zuckerberg referred to Trump as “badass,” and donated $1 million to his inaugural fund. Meta made news earlier this month by tapping Dana White, a longtime Trump ally and head of the UFC, to its board of directors.

On Jan. 7, Zuckerberg announced Facebook would end its third-party “fact-checking” program and restore “free expression” across Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg admitted Facebook had “gone too far” with its “fact-checking.” He said the platform would move toward an X-style “community notes” system instead.

CHD’s ongoing case against Meta

Trump wasn’t alone in suing Meta for censorship. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic period, Meta, X, YouTube and others censored speech that dissented from mainstream public health narratives, including posts by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and its founder and former chairman, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, Meta not only censored our posts — many having to do with topics that the so-called medical ‘experts’ like Dr. Anthony Fauci were dead wrong about — but outright kicked us off the platform without warning,” CHD CEO Mary Holland wrote in the New York Post.

In August, Zuckerberg told U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan in a letter that senior Biden administration officials pressured Facebook to censor content related to COVID-19 during the pandemic. Zuckerberg said he regretted not being more outspoken about the issue, and that he planned to push back if something similar happened in the future.

CHD sued Meta in November 2020 over the social media giant’s censorship practices. The company deplatformed CHD from Facebook and Instagram in August 2022 and has not reinstated the accounts.

CHD launched a petition asking Zuckerberg to reinstate the organization on Facebook and Instagram. At press time, 16,952 had signed the petition.

CHD’s lawsuit alleges that government actors partnered with Facebook to censor CHD and Kennedy’s speech — particularly speech related to vaccines and COVID-19 — that should have been protected under the First Amendment.

The suit also named “fact-checking” firms Science Feedback, and the Poynter Institute and its PolitiFact website. On Aug. 9, 2024, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against CHD.

Less than 24 hours before Zuckerberg’s Jan. 7 announcement that Facebook was ending its third-party “fact-checking” program, CHD petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its censorship case against the company.

Zuckerberg also went on Joe Rogan’s podcast a few days later, where he said the Biden administration pressured Facebook to remove posts about vaccine side effects.

CHD also has a lawsuit pending against Biden administration officials for censoring content.

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