“This is going to be a big year for redefining our relationships with governments,” Facebook Sith Lord Mark Zuckerberg told investors on an earnings call yesterday. And he wasn’t kidding! Zuck discovered a new and innovative way to bribe the sitting president.
What if you pretend to lose a lawsuit you already won, and then agree to fork over a massive settlement, while rolling over to show your belly? It might not maximize shareholder value, but it will definitely “redefine” your relationship with the despot who only recently threatened to throw you in jail.
The Wall Street Journal’s Annie Linskey and Rebecca Balhaus were first to report details of the settlement between the social media company and President Trump. The case was originally filed in Florida in 2021, along with similar complaints against Twitter and YouTube.
Trump’s theory was that the social media platforms violated his First Amendment rights by tortiously deplatforming him after he mounted a coup to stay in power and sent his goons to lay siege to Congress. Of course, only the government can violate the First Amendment, and, according to linear time — fake news! — Trump was president when he got booted on January 7, 2021. But Trump had a solution for that, and it was to blame Adam Schiff.
See, some members of Congress, most notably Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz called for social media platforms to lose their immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Trump himself actually vetoed the defense budget in 2020 because Congress refused to include a repeal of Section 230. But then-Congressman now-Senator Schiff also made noises about that a couple times, and suggested that the platforms should do more about COVID misinformation. And that was a threat that turned Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube into government agents, ipso fatso … First Amendment violation!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, courts didn’t see it that way. First, the cases were booted to California consistent with the websites’ terms of service. And then Judge James Donato nuked the Twitter suit in 2022 for being defective in more or less every way. Trump appealed, and the Meta and YouTube suits were put on hold pending review by the Ninth Circuit, since the three cases were functionally identical. That case has been languishing forever, as the parties bat around the Fifth Circuit’s batshit decision in Missouri v. Murthy (AKA “the jawboning case”), and then the Supreme Court’s reversal on standing grounds. But in the meantime, Twitter and Facebook (or X and Meta, if you’re opposed to deadnaming, which is perfectly fine on both platforms) appear to have decided that it would be better to lose than bother litigating against the mad king. And so Twitter filed a notice of proposed settlement in November, presumably because Twitter and the government are now fused in the imperial singularity of Elon Musk. And yesterday Zuckerberg got out Meta’s checkbook and cut a check for $25 million — $22 million for Trump’s presidential library, and $3 million for legal fees and the other plaintiffs, including Naomi Wolf.
In 2020, Zuckerberg’s family charity funded various voting access initiatives through the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Helping Americans to vote. Plus Facebook briefly suppressed the virality of the Hunter Biden Laptop (From Hell!) story. And so Zuck became an enemy of the right, even as he leaned over backward not to apply his platform’s rules to conservatives. And when he trooped down to Mar-a-Lago in November, Trump “signaled that the litigation had to be resolved before Zuckerberg could be ‘brought into the tent,’” according to the WSJ.
To be clear, this is not like ABC settling the trollsuit over the Stephanopoulos calling Trump and “adjudicated rapist” — or at least, not exactly.
That was a credible claim that might well have survived a motion to dismiss. This is Zuckerberg writing a ten-figure check to buy off the Dear Leader and ensure that there will be no further antitrust or regulatory actions, much less threats of imprisonment. Zuck can integrate vertically, horizontally, or whichever way he pleases. He can steal to feed his AI, with no fear of prosecution. And all it takes is the further enshittification of his platform and reckless endangerment of minorities, plus the change he dug out of the couch in the Meta breakroom.
Sure it’s a bribe. But considering what he got for it, it’s the deal of the century!
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
The post Zuck Throws Cash At Trump To ‘Settle’ Deplatforming Trollsuit appeared first on Above the Law.
“This is going to be a big year for redefining our relationships with governments,” Facebook Sith Lord Mark Zuckerberg told investors on an earnings call yesterday. And he wasn’t kidding! Zuck discovered a new and innovative way to bribe the sitting president.
What if you pretend to lose a lawsuit you already won, and then agree to fork over a massive settlement, while rolling over to show your belly? It might not maximize shareholder value, but it will definitely “redefine” your relationship with the despot who only recently threatened to throw you in jail.
The Wall Street Journal’s Annie Linskey and Rebecca Balhaus were first to report details of the settlement between the social media company and President Trump. The case was originally filed in Florida in 2021, along with similar complaints against Twitter and YouTube.
Trump’s theory was that the social media platforms violated his First Amendment rights by tortiously deplatforming him after he mounted a coup to stay in power and sent his goons to lay siege to Congress. Of course, only the government can violate the First Amendment, and, according to linear time — fake news! — Trump was president when he got booted on January 7, 2021. But Trump had a solution for that, and it was to blame Adam Schiff.
See, some members of Congress, most notably Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz called for social media platforms to lose their immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Trump himself actually vetoed the defense budget in 2020 because Congress refused to include a repeal of Section 230. But then-Congressman now-Senator Schiff also made noises about that a couple times, and suggested that the platforms should do more about COVID misinformation. And that was a threat that turned Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube into government agents, ipso fatso … First Amendment violation!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, courts didn’t see it that way. First, the cases were booted to California consistent with the websites’ terms of service. And then Judge James Donato nuked the Twitter suit in 2022 for being defective in more or less every way. Trump appealed, and the Meta and YouTube suits were put on hold pending review by the Ninth Circuit, since the three cases were functionally identical. That case has been languishing forever, as the parties bat around the Fifth Circuit’s batshit decision in Missouri v. Murthy (AKA “the jawboning case”), and then the Supreme Court’s reversal on standing grounds. But in the meantime, Twitter and Facebook (or X and Meta, if you’re opposed to deadnaming, which is perfectly fine on both platforms) appear to have decided that it would be better to lose than bother litigating against the mad king. And so Twitter filed a notice of proposed settlement in November, presumably because Twitter and the government are now fused in the imperial singularity of Elon Musk. And yesterday Zuckerberg got out Meta’s checkbook and cut a check for $25 million — $22 million for Trump’s presidential library, and $3 million for legal fees and the other plaintiffs, including Naomi Wolf.
In 2020, Zuckerberg’s family charity funded various voting access initiatives through the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Helping Americans to vote. Plus Facebook briefly suppressed the virality of the Hunter Biden Laptop (From Hell!) story. And so Zuck became an enemy of the right, even as he leaned over backward not to apply his platform’s rules to conservatives. And when he trooped down to Mar-a-Lago in November, Trump “signaled that the litigation had to be resolved before Zuckerberg could be ‘brought into the tent,’” according to the WSJ.
To be clear, this is not like ABC settling the trollsuit over the Stephanopoulos calling Trump and “adjudicated rapist” — or at least, not exactly.
That was a credible claim that might well have survived a motion to dismiss. This is Zuckerberg writing a ten-figure check to buy off the Dear Leader and ensure that there will be no further antitrust or regulatory actions, much less threats of imprisonment. Zuck can integrate vertically, horizontally, or whichever way he pleases. He can steal to feed his AI, with no fear of prosecution. And all it takes is the further enshittification of his platform and reckless endangerment of minorities, plus the change he dug out of the couch in the Meta breakroom.
Sure it’s a bribe. But considering what he got for it, it’s the deal of the century!
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
