US President Donald Trump signed an agreement with the Meta Corporation on Wednesday in the case of blocking his pages on the social networks Facebook and Instagram, owned by the company, after the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The corporation will pay Trump $25 million, reports The Wall Street Journal.
According to its information, under the terms of the deal to end the case, $22 million will be sent to the presidential library fund, and the rest of the funds will go to legal costs. The corporation will not publicly admit its guilt, the publication notes.
Meta, headed by Mark Zuckerberg, previously donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration.
The New York Times reported that Zuckerberg has been trying to improve his relationship with Trump over the past year and a half to protect his corporation from a possible blow from the new administration. Meta has long been under attack from conservatives in Washington, who accuse it of bias in favor of Democrats. In January, Zuckerberg said on a podcast hosted by American comedian and TV host Joe Rogan that during the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden, US administration officials rudely asked the corporation to remove certain posts. Trump's accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X), and YouTube were suspended in early 2021 for violating the platforms' rules. In July of that year, Trump filed a lawsuit against the social media companies. The charges against Twitter were dismissed by the court, and the case against Google, the corporation that owns YouTube, was closed in 2023.
The politician's Twitter account was restored in 2022, and the Republican's other social media accounts were restored in 2023. The blocking of the politician's accounts on the aforementioned platforms led to the launch of his own social network Truth Social in February 2022, which has since become his main place for communicating with Internet users.
On January 6, 2021, supporters of Trump, whose first presidential term was then expiring, stormed the Capitol building to prevent the certification of the results of the November 2020 presidential election, won by Biden. During the unrest in the building, police shot a protester. A Capitol Police officer also died in the clashes.