YouTube agreed to pay $24.5 million to President Donald Trump to settle a lawsuit over suspending his account in 2021, according to documents filed in court on Sept. 29.
The social media website, owned by Alphabet, put Trump’s YouTube account on hold following the security breach at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump also sued Alphabet-owned Google, Facebook parent Meta, and X, then known as Twitter, arguing that they illegally suppressed conservative viewpoints. Meta and X agreed earlier this year to settle the respective lawsuits against them.
Trump had announced the lawsuits in July 2021 after the three social media platforms suspended his accounts six months before over his comments related to the Jan. 6 incident.
Trump said at the time he was taking legal action to protect the First Amendment-based right to free speech, adding his rights were denied when the three platforms banned him.
Trump at the time described the lawsuits as a “very beautiful development” to safeguard free speech in the United States. The social media companies’ alleged control over political discourse is “destroying the country,” he said.
The companies said in January 2021 that they had banned Trump over his allegations that the November 2020 election was stolen, which they alleged contributed to Jan. 6-related violence. Twitter said Trump’s ban would be permanent, Facebook imposed a two-year ban on Trump, and YouTube said his suspension would continue until it determined that “the risk of violence has decreased.”
Trump argued that social media companies have “ceased to be private” companies and cited the Section 230 protection shield that such firms employ to protect themselves from liability.
Republicans have argued that the federal rule has allowed big tech firms to censor their political opponents—while some have gone further, arguing that social media giants should be regulated as utilities.
“This lawsuit is just the beginning,” Trump said at the time.
Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act allows internet companies to be generally exempt from liability for the material that users post. The federal statute, which provides a legal “safe harbor” for internet companies, also allows social media platforms to moderate content by removing posts that, for example, are obscene or violate the services’ own standards, so long as they are acting in “good faith.”
YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter ended the suspension of Trump’s accounts in March 2023, February 2023, and November 2022, respectively.
Google and its parent, Alphabet, told a congressional committee in a letter on Sept. 23 that YouTube creators who were banned from the platform over their views on the COVID-19 pandemic or the 2020 election may rejoin the platform.
Rules that had been in place forbidding some discussion of COVID-19 and the election were lifted in 2023 or 2024, Google said through its attorneys. Individuals whose accounts were suspended or taken down included Dan Bongino, who is now a deputy director of the FBI.
Google said the pandemic era was an unprecedented time that forced platforms to “balance freedom of expression” with moderation of content “that could result in real-world harm.”
The situation was complicated by top officials in the Biden administration pressuring the company to take action against certain COVID-19 content “that did not violate its policies,” the company said.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and X owner Elon Musk, who became an ally of Trump in 2024, attended Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the attorneys for Trump and YouTube. No replies were received by publication time.
In the YouTube settlement, $22 million will be sent on Trump’s behalf to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that is involved in building a $200 million ballroom at the White House.
The balance of the settlement will be sent to other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, including the American Conservative Union, which runs the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
The other plaintiffs to receive payments are Andrew Baggiani, Austen Fletcher, Maryse Veronica Jean-Louis, Frank Valentine, Kelly Victory, and Naomi Wolf, according to the notice of settlement filed with U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland Division.
Reuters, The Associated Press, Jack Phillips, and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
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