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.”

Facebook acknowledged that it mistakenly censored the iconic image of former President Donald Trump with his fist raised in the immediate aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

A post on Mark Zuckerberg’s social media site by a user with the handle End Wokeness that showed the Republican presidential candidate defiantly pumping his fist in the air while blood streams down his face had initially been flagged as misinformation.

The user was threatened with being deplatformed.

Facebook apologized for mistakenly censoring a real photo of a bloodied Donald Trump post-assassination attempt, after initially targeting doctored images showing Secret Service agents smiling. The error occurred during an effort to remove a manipulated photo meant to spread misinformation. Facebook, owned by Meta, rectified the mistake, affirming the authenticity of the original photo captured by an Associated Press photographer, depicting Trump raising his fist after being shot.

Donald Trump lashed out at Facebook Tuesday after the social media company apologized for fact-checking a photograph of the assassination attempt he faced earlier this month.

Trump accused both Facebook and Google of plotting against his presidential reelection bid by censuring photographs of the bloody and deadly attack in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.

Instagram accidentally changed users’ settings to limit political content automatically, even if those users had turned the option off, the company confirmed Thursday.  

Several Instagram users spoke out after noticing their settings had been changed to limit political content, an option created by parent company Meta in February, ahead of Thursday’s first 2024 debate between President Biden and former President Trump.