President Trump has signed documents officially requiring Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to pay approximately $25 million. As the Wall Street Journal reports, this agreement would aim to settle the 2021 lawsuit filed by Trump against the social media giant.
Meta Platforms had in fact suspended his accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot episode on Capitol Hill. The media giant then announced in June 2021 that it would ban Trump from participating on its platform for at least two years after discovering that his posts about the riot “had fueled violence and posed a risk to public safety.” For the same reason, Donald Trump’s social profile had also been revoked by Twitter, which is now X owned by Elon Musk.
In that context, Trump had sued Facebook and Twitter, as well as their CEOs, claiming that they were illegally silencing conservative viewpoints and violating his First Amendment right to free speech. The president’s social profile was then restored to Twitter in 2022 and Facebook in 2023.
In complaints filed in the Court for the Southern District of Florida, Trump had asked the court to overturn Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This measure protects social media companies from liability for content posted on their platforms. Trump had also asked that his accounts be reinstated. Concurrently with the complaint, he had asked the courts to prevent Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube from “exercising censorship, editorial control, or prior restraint in its many forms” regarding the presidents’ posts and videos.
