The FTC’s high-stakes antitrust lawsuit against Meta kicked off today with opening arguments in Washington, DC. Mark Zuckerberg is expected to take the stand to defend his company against the federal government’s claims that the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp should never have been approved.

Meta has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump against the social-media company after it suspended his Facebook and Instagram accounts following the January 6 Capitol riot in 2021.

The settlement marks a major victory for Trump, who previously criticized social-media companies for censoring him four years ago but has lately welcomed their chief executives into his inner circle. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is one such executive who embraced the new administration and even attended Trump’s inauguration.

Meta, the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, is to cut about 5% of its global workforce, with its poorest-performing employees most likely to leave.

In a memo to staff, the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said he had decided to “move out low-performers faster”, ahead of what he said would be an “intense year”, and would be accelerating the company’s usual performance management system.

Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President-elect Trump, went after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a Monday episode of his “Bannon’s War Room” show.

“Zuckerberg can’t be trusted, at all,” Bannon said on his show, in a clip highlighted by Mediaite. “He came in the Oval Office … when I was there … I went absolutely bonkers, but he still got to the Oval Office.”

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg slammed the Biden Administration for censorship, took shots at one of his biggest tech rivals and said he’s “optimistic” about President-elect Donald Trump during a wide-ranging interview with popular podcaster Joe Rogan.

Wearing a brown T-shirt and gold-chain, the suddenly conservative-sounding tech tycoon spent the first hour of the nearly three-hour sit-down discussing the strong-arm tactics Team Biden used to silence those who cast doubt on the COVID vaccine – a topic dear to Rogan’s heart.

Mark Zuckerberg unloaded on President Joe Biden and his administration during a surprise appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast that was published Friday.

Zuckerberg attacked the White House over the way senior officials pressured Meta to moderate content on its social media networks, part of a scathing interview just 10 days before Biden is set to leave office.

Mark Zuckerberg spent this week reshaping Meta to be more MAGA-friendly, and capped it off Friday by calling for the "repopulation" of the "cultural elite class" on Joe Rogan's podcast.

Why it matters: Over the last few days, Meta has dropped internal DEI guidelines and opened the floodgates for hate speech, racism, and conspiracy theories, but Zuckerberg's comments on Rogan tie him explicitly to right-wing talking points.

The co-chair of the independent body that reviews Facebook and Instagram content has said she is "very concerned" about how parent company Meta's decision to ditch fact-checkers will affect minority groups.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, from Meta's oversight board, told the BBC she welcomed aspects of the shake-up, which will see users decide about the accuracy of posts via X-style "community notes".

Is Mark Zuckerberg becoming Elon Musk?

The Meta CEO's replacement of its own fact-checkers with a version of Community Notes – name-checking X's crowdsourced fact-checking feature and adopting the same name – marks one of the most stunning practical results of Donald Trump's second election and a blow to efforts by governments and private disinformation cops to pressure platforms to censor.

Meta agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit by the state of Texas over the Facebook owner’s unauthorized use of biometric data by users, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Tuesday.

The suit, filed by Paxton in February 2022, accused Meta of capturing and using the biometric data of millions of Texas residents — which was contained in uploaded photos and videos on Facebook — without legally required permissions.