YouTube has settled a lawsuit President Donald Trump filed against the company in 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal[1]. Trump filed sweeping lawsuits[2] against Google-owned YouTube, Meta (then Facebook), and X (then Twitter) after he was suspended from the platforms, and now all three companies have settled with the president.
YouTube will pay $24.5 million, with $22 million going toward the Trust for the National Mall nonprofit[3] to help “support the construction of the White House State Ballroom,” the settlement document says, and $2.5 million will go to other plaintiffs. The full settlement is slightly less than the $25 million Meta agreed to pay in January[4], and the WSJ says that Google executives were “eager to keep their settlement smaller than the one paid by rival Meta.” X settled for about $10 million in February[5].
Trump was suspended from uploading new videos[6] in January 2021 after the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, with YouTube citing “concerns about the ongoing potential for violence.” YouTube lifted the restrictions in March 2023, saying that[7] it “carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.”
References
- ^ according to The Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com)
- ^ sweeping lawsuits (www.theverge.com)
- ^ the Trust for the National Mall nonprofit (nationalmall.org)
- ^ in January (www.theverge.com)
- ^ in February (www.theverge.com)
- ^ suspended from uploading new videos (www.theverge.com)
- ^ saying that (www.theverge.com)