Musk's X platform pays Trump $10 million for damage caused by censorship

The social media platform X, owned by Elon Musk, agreed to pay President Donald Trump about $10 million to make up for the damage caused by censorship against him following the Jan. 6 events when protesters took over the Capitol, generating criticism against President Trump, who was later banned from major social media platforms.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk reached a settlement for the old lawsuit filed by Trump and other plaintiffs against the former management of X (then Twitter), led by former CEO Jack Dorsey, who defended the decision to remove the president from the platform at the time.

Upon acquiring Twitter and renaming it X, Musk restored Trump's account in November 2022.

According to the WSJ, the president's team considered dropping the lawsuit due to the close relationship between Trump and Musk.However, the parties ultimately decided to move forward with the agreement.

With this agreement, X is the second social network to settle a lawsuit with Trump after being vetoed following the events of January 6. The first was Meta, which concluded a similar agreement over the suspension of the president's Facebook account for $25 million last month.

$22 million of Meta's payment went to Trump's presidential library.

According to the WSJ, Trump's lawyers are expected to seek a settlement with Google, which also censored the president on YouTube after the Capitol assault.

Interestingly, after he was ousted from the platforms, Trump has markedly improved relations with U.S. tech moguls, including Mark Zuckerberg, who, while not acknowledging that he was wrong to censor Trump directly, did comment on several occasions that Meta made an ill-advised decision to censor, limit or ban specific content during the COVID-19 pandemic.