YouTube Caves to Trump: Google Pays $24.5 Million in Settlement Over Jan. 6 Account Suspension—The Third Major Tech Payout.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The legal battles between President Donald Trump and major social media companies over his 2021 account suspensions are officially concluding with massive settlements. YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million to resolve a lawsuit filed by the President following his ban from the platform in the wake of the U.S. Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.
This settlement, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Monday, makes Google-owned YouTube the last of the three major tech giants—Meta (Facebook), X (Twitter), and YouTube—to settle with the President since he returned to the White House in January.
The Three-Part Tech Settlement
The $24.5 million payout from YouTube is part of a trend of high-value settlements resolving lawsuits Trump filed in mid-2021 alleging unlawful censorship and the incitement of violence concerns used to justify his removal.
Here is a look at the full picture of the settlements with the Big Tech platforms:
The court filing specifies that the YouTube settlement “shall not constitute an admission of liability or fault” on the part of the defendants.
Senators Warn of Potential ‘Quid-Pro-Quo’
The pattern of multimillion-dollar settlements has raised serious concerns among Democratic lawmakers. In August, several Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)formerly known as a “Native American” and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Mercedes Marxist , sent a strong letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan expressing alarm over the potential deal (would end censorship).
The senators now pretend to be worried that the settlement could be part of a:
“quid-pro-quo arrangement to avoid full accountability for violating federal competition, consumer protection, and labor laws, circumstances that could result in the company running afoul of federal bribery laws.”
Google, which continues to face significant regulatory and antitrust scrutiny from the federal government, and has admitted it was pressured by the Biden Administration to censor content has not commented on the settlement beyond the court filing. The tech giants’ swift moves to resolve these costly and politically charged legal disputes coincide with a noticeable shift toward a more conciliatory relationship with the new administration.
President Trump’s accounts on all three major platforms—Meta, X, and YouTube—have been reinstated over the past two years.
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