YouTube to pay $24.5m to settle lawsuit over Trump’s account suspension

3 months ago 42

Video level settles suit filed successful effect to Trump’s suspension implicit the January 6, 2021, riot astatine the US Capitol.

Published On 30 Sep 2025

YouTube has agreed to wage $24.5m to settee a suit brought by United States President Donald Trump aft the level suspended his relationship successful effect to the January 6, 2021, riot astatine the US Capitol.

Under the settlement, YouTube, which is owned by Google genitor institution Alphabet, volition lend $22m connected Trump’s behalf to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that is overseeing a $200m task to conception a ballroom astatine the White House, a tribunal filing showed connected Monday.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 items

end of list

The remaining $2.5m volition spell to different plaintiffs successful the case, including the American Conservative Union and American writer Naomi Wolf, according to the filing astatine the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

The colony does not see immoderate admittance of wrongdoing by YouTube, and was reached for the “sole intent of compromising disputed claims and avoiding the expenses and risks of further litigation”, according to the filing.

The payout is simply a comparatively tiny sum for YouTube, whose advertizing revenues came to astir $9.8bn successful the 2nd 4th of 2025 alone.

The colony comes aft Meta Platforms and X earlier this twelvemonth agreed to multimillion-dollar payouts to resoluteness Trump’s claims that helium was unduly censored pursuing the January 6 attack, which was carried retired by Trump supporters motivated by his mendacious assertion that the 2020 predetermination had been “stolen”.

John P Coale, a Trump state and lawyer who brought the 3 cases, said helium was pleased with the outcome.

“Very overmuch so,” Coale told Al Jazeera. “As is the president and the different plaintiffs.”

Coale said the 3 cases had netted $60m successful total.

“We judge we changed the behaviour,” helium said.

After de-platforming Trump implicit fears his mendacious claims astir the 2020 statesmanlike predetermination were driving violence, Big Tech has moved to curry favour with his medication since his instrumentality to the White House.

Earlier this month, tech CEOs, including Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Apple’s Tim Cook, lavished praise connected Trump astatine a White House meal lawsuit and expressed enactment for his administration’s initiatives connected artificial intelligence.

Media companies person besides paid retired ample sums to resoluteness Trump’s ineligible claims.

Paramount Global said successful July that it had agreed to wage $16m to resoluteness Trump’s claims that CBS News’s 60 Minutes programme had deceptively edited an interrogation with Vice President Kamala Harris.

In December, ABC News agreed to lend $15m to Trump’s room to settee claims that helium had been defamed by its anchor, George Stephanopoulos.

Timothy Koskie, a postdoctoral researcher astatine the School of Media and Communications astatine the University of Sydney, said that YouTube’s colony dealt a stroke to hopes for a accordant attack to contented moderation by societal media platforms.

“Unfortunately, with the erosion of a rules-based order, we simply can’t expect to get accordant attraction from anyone who seeks to payment from this administration,” Koskie told Al Jazeera.

“That is going to see an incredibly ample swath of companies that we prosecute with successful our regular lives, particularly, but precise overmuch not exclusively, the platforms. Rather than removing censorship, this vigorously empowers it successful an particularly selective vein.”

“Further, the US historically acceptable precedents for galore governments astir the world,” helium added.

Read Entire Article