YouTube to pay US$24.5 million to settle Trump account suspension suit

ALPHABET-owned YouTube has agreed to pay US$24.5 million to settle a lawsuit that U.S. President Donald Trump brought against the company over the suspension of his account following the January 2021 U.S. Capitol riots, a court filing showed on Monday (September 29).

AI Brief

Google is the last major tech firm to settle Trump's 2021 lawsuits over alleged censorship of conservative voices.
US$22 million will go toward Trump's ballroom project and other plaintiffs; YouTube avoids policy changes or admission.
Meta and X settled earlier; Trump's YouTube account was suspended in 2021 and restored in 2023.

The deal makes Google the last of the three big tech companies to resolve lawsuits Trump brought in July 2021 accusing them of unlawfully silencing conservative viewpoints.

Trump had also sued Twitter, now known as X, and Facebook owner Meta, as well as Alphabet's Google, and their chief executives in July 2021.

Meta and X agreed earlier this year to pay to settle the lawsuits.

Under the YouTube settlement, US$22 million will be paid on Trump's behalf to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that the filing says is dedicated to the construction of a US$200 million ballroom that Trump is building at the White House.

Work on the 90,000-square-foot (8361.27 square meters) facility is expected to be completed "long before" Trump's four-year term ends in January 2029.

The remaining amount will go to other plaintiffs in the case, including the American Conservative Union, which sponsors the Conservative Political Action Conference, and U.S. author Naomi Wolf.

YouTube did not admit wrongdoing and will not make product or policy changes under the settlement.

Trump did not lose his YouTube account in 2021 but was suspended from uploading new videos; it was restored in 2023.

In January, Meta agreed to pay about $25 million and X paid about US$10 million in February to settle similar lawsuits by Trump.