Meta said on Wednesday that it had agreed to pay President Trump $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit he filed over the suspension of his Facebook and Instagram accounts after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
The move was a significant concession by a major tech company and a victory for Mr. Trump, who had previously criticized social media platforms for censoring him but has lately wooed tech titans including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive.
Mr. Zuckerberg has thrown his support behind Mr. Trump and has been remaking his company for the new administration. This month, Mr. Zuckerberg made sweeping policy changes to allow for more types of speech across Meta’s apps — which include Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp — and eliminated diversity and inclusion initiatives across the company. In some cases, the changes have proved contentious to his work force.
In a call with investors on Wednesday for Meta’s quarterly financial results, Mr. Zuckerberg praised the Trump administration for supporting American tech companies and “defending our values.”
He added, “This is going to be a big year for redefining our relationships with governments.”
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other apps, posted a 21 percent jump in revenue and a 49 percent increase in profit for the fourth quarter, but gave a lighter-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter.
In December, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit by Mr. Trump. ABC News agreed to donate the money to Mr. Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum. The network and its star anchor, George Stephanopoulos, also published a statement saying they “regret” remarks that were made about Mr. Trump during a televised interview in March.
Meta’s settlement with Mr. Trump follows similar terms. Roughly $22 million will go toward funding Mr. Trump’s presidential library, with the remaining $3 million earmarked for Mr. Trump’s legal fees and other plaintiffs who joined the lawsuit. Meta is not admitting wrongdoing as a part of the agreement, which was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.
On Wednesday, Meta said its increased revenue and profit for the fourth quarter were driven largely by advancements in its systems for advertisement targeting and suggesting relevant posts and videos to users. Those improvements came from its continued investments in artificial intelligence, the company said.
Revenue for the fourth quarter was $48.4 billion, up from $40.1 billion a year earlier and above Wall Street estimates of $47 billion, according to data compiled by FactSet, a market analysis firm. Profit was $20.8 billion, up from $14 billion a year earlier.
But the Silicon Valley company also said it expected revenue in the current quarter to come in at $39.5 billion to $41.8 billion. The low end of the forecast was below analyst expectations of $41.7 billion.
That revenue projection raised questions among investors, especially as Meta plans to increase spending. Last week, Meta said its capital expenditures this year would total more than $60 billion to $65 billion on data centers and other infrastructure, up from the roughly $38 billion to $40 billion it spent in 2024, as it works to gain an edge in the race to develop A.I. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and smaller firms like OpenAI are also shelling out billions to lead in A.I.
In recent days, the Chinese A.I. start-up DeepSeek has raised questions about how the technology is developed after it created a new A.I. model for a fraction of the cost of many U.S. firms. DeepSeek built its technology using freely available A.I. tools shared by tech companies like Meta and then published its results for all to use, a common tech industry practice called open source.
In the investor call, Mr. Zuckerberg called DeepSeek a “new competitor” and said there would “be an open source standard globally.” But he added a touch of nationalism, saying that “for our own national advantage, it’s important that it’s an American standard.”
Meta’s push into the so-called metaverse, an immersive digital world, continued to lose money. The company’s Reality Labs division, which develops augmented reality glasses and virtual reality products for the metaverse, lost $5 billion in the fourth quarter.
Still, the company continued to add users to its apps. Meta said the number of “daily active people” across its apps totaled 3.35 billion in December, up 5 percent from a year earlier.
Content Source: www.nytimes.com