YouTube agreed to pay a $24.5 million settlement to President Trump and others who were suspended by the video streaming platform in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, according to a legal document filed on Monday.
YouTube froze Mr. Trump’s account after the riot, blocking him from uploading new videos and arguing that the content could lead to more violence. Mr. Trump sued YouTube in October 2021, claiming that it and other social media firms that removed his accounts had wrongfully censored him.
The vast majority of YouTube’s settlement payment — $22 million — will go to Mr. Trump, according to the filing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He has directed that the money be contributed to the Trust for the National Mall and to the construction of a ballroom at the White House.
The remaining $2.5 million will be distributed among other plaintiffs in the case, including the writer Naomi Wolf and the American Conservative Union.
“If he hadn’t been re-elected, we’d be in court forever,” said John Coale, a lawyer for Mr. Trump. “Then the president gets re-elected and things look a lot better.”
A representative for YouTube declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal reported the agreement earlier.
YouTube’s settlement is the latest move by major technology and media firms to end expensive legal battles with Mr. Trump, who has accused social media platforms of censorship and claimed that media firms have defamed him.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in January settled a similar lawsuit brought by Mr. Trump, agreeing to pay $25 million. X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk and formerly known as Twitter, agreed in February to pay about $10 million to resolve a dispute about the 2021 suspension of Mr. Trump’s account.
Media companies have also made concessions to Mr. Trump. Paramount in July agreed to pay him $16 million to settle his lawsuit over the editing of a CBS “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million in December to settle a defamation case filed by Mr. Trump against the network and one of its anchors, George Stephanopoulos.
Mr. Trump and his administration have ramped up pressure campaigns against his perceived enemies in recent months, including law firms that championed Democratic causes, prominent universities and media critics like Jimmy Kimmel. This month, Mr. Trump sued The New York Times, asking for $15 billion in damages. The lawsuit was dismissed, although Mr. Trump may refile.
Until recently, Mr. Trump’s lawsuits against the social media companies had largely stalled. A federal judge dismissed the case against Twitter in 2022, and judges had put the lawsuits against Meta and YouTube on ice.
X reinstated Mr. Trump’s account soon after Mr. Musk acquired the company in 2022, while YouTube and Meta restored his accounts in 2023.
“The law was on their side,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, who said the settlements were akin to “buying influence.”
The companies “do seem like they are currying favor with the presidential administration,” he added.
The $24.5 million settlement is a relatively small amount for Alphabet, which earned $9.7 billion in revenue from YouTube ads in the second quarter of the year, according to the company’s most recent earnings report.
Alphabet executives have spent time at the White House since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, working to repair a once-fractious relationship. Sundar Pichai, its chief executive, and Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, attended a dinner with the president earlier this month focused on artificial intelligence.
Mr. Brin’s girlfriend, the wellness influencer Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto, celebrated YouTube’s settlement in a post on her Instagram story. “Well deserved. This kind of censorship was an abomination,” she wrote.
Last week, YouTube said it would reinstate content creators who were banned for violating its rules against misinformation related to Covid and the 2020 election. The streaming service also said it would relax some of its content moderation policies, in response to an investigation by Republican lawmakers into whether social media companies restricted speech at the behest of the Biden administration.
Mr. Coale said the policy changes were discussed during settlement talks with YouTube but were not a condition.
“It’s better than it was back then,” Mr. Coale said. “There’s no government now pushing them to do anything, and I think that will stay in the future, no matter who wins the White House.”
Kate Conger is a technology reporter based in San Francisco. She can be reached at [email protected].
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