YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by U.S. President Donald Trump over the suspension of his account following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
According to a court filing on Monday, YouTube—owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet—will contribute $22 million on Trump’s behalf to the Trust for the National Mall, which is overseeing a $200 million project to construct a ballroom at the White House.
The remaining $2.5 million will be shared among other plaintiffs, including the American Conservative Union and author Naomi Wolf.
The settlement specifies that YouTube did not admit to any wrongdoing, stating it was agreed upon “for the sole purpose of compromising disputed claims and avoiding the expenses and risks of further litigation.”
The sum represents a small fraction of YouTube’s finances, with the platform earning nearly $9.8 billion in ad revenue in Q2 of 2025 alone.
Part of wider wave of settlements
This settlement follows similar multimillion-dollar payouts by Meta Platforms and X earlier this year, after Trump accused them of unfair censorship tied to his false claims of election fraud.
Trump’s lawyer John P. Coale, who filed all three cases, welcomed the outcome. “Very much so,” he told Al Jazeera. “As is the president and the other plaintiffs.”
The deals underscore Big Tech’s shifting stance toward Trump, who returned to the White House earlier this year. Major tech CEOs—including Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple’s Tim Cook—recently praised his administration at a White House dinner focused on artificial intelligence.
Media companies also paying out
Beyond tech platforms, several media outlets have resolved Trump’s claims with significant payouts.
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Paramount Global agreed in July to pay $16 million over claims CBS News’s 60 Minutes misrepresented an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
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ABC News settled in December by contributing $15 million to Trump’s presidential library after a defamation dispute involving anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Concerns over content moderation
Timothy Koskie, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney, said YouTube’s settlement highlights the erosion of consistent standards in content moderation.
“Unfortunately, with the erosion of a rules-based order, we simply can’t expect to get consistent treatment from anyone who seeks to benefit from this administration,” Koskie said. “Rather than removing censorship, this vigorously empowers it in an especially selective vein.”
He warned the precedent could influence global approaches to online speech regulation.
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