YouTube caves to Trump with $24.5 million settlement

YouTube has settled a lawsuit President Donald Trump filed against the company in 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal. Trump filed sweeping lawsuits against Google-owned YouTube, Meta (then Facebook), and X (then Twitter) after he was suspended from the platforms, and now all three companies have settled with the president.

YouTube will pay $24.5 million, with $22 million going toward the Trust for the National Mall nonprofit to help “support the construction of the White House State Ballroom,” the settlement document says, and $2.5 million will go to other plaintiffs. The full settlement is slightly less than the $25 million Meta agreed to pay in January, and the WSJ says that Google executives were “eager to keep their settlement smaller than the one paid by rival Meta.” X settled for about $10 million in February. 

Trump was suspended from uploading new videos in January 2021 after the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, with YouTube citing “concerns about the ongoing potential for violence.” YouTube lifted the restrictions in March 2023, saying that it “carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.”