Social media companies paid Trump tens of millions of dollars to block his Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages.

YouTube agreed to pay Donald Trump $24,5 million to settle a lawsuit over the suspension of his account. The platform suspended the US president's YouTube channel in 2021 following the storming of the Capitol on January 6, according to The Guardian.

YouTube agreed to pay $24,5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump in 2021 that alleged the platform wrongfully suspended his channel following the events of January 6, 2021. The Google subsidiary became the latest in a string of tech companies to pay the president multimillion-dollar settlements for past decisions regarding his accounts.

Trump filed a lawsuit against YouTube and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, claiming the platform "has amassed an unprecedented concentration of power, market share, and ability to dictate the national public discourse." YouTube explained that it suspended Trump's channel for violating its site rules prohibiting incitement to violence. The case has now been settled and closed.

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This news comes just a week after YouTube announced it was reinstating the channels of creators previously suspended for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and the 2020 US presidential election. In its statement, YouTube emphasized its welcoming of conservative voices on its platform and blamed the account suspensions on pressure from Joe Biden.

Meta, Facebook's parent company, settled a similar lawsuit filed by Trump for $25 million in January, while X (formerly Twitter) settled for $10 million in February. Most of the proceeds from the Meta case will go to the Trump Presidential Library Fund. Regarding the YouTube settlement, Trump ordered $22 million of that sum to be donated to the restoration and preservation of the National Mall, as well as to support the construction of the White House Ballroom, which, according to documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is expected to cost approximately $200 million.

All three cases were initially brought by Trump attorney and ally John Coal. He claimed that Trump's return to the White House played a decisive role in reaching a series of settlements with tech companies: "If he hadn't been re-elected, we would have been in litigation for a thousand years." Coal currently serves as Trump's deputy special envoy for Ukraine and Belarus.

In a letter to the Guardian, Coal called Trump "the perfect client."

"I'm pleased that this and other cases I filed on behalf of DJT in July 2021 were resolved for $60 million," he added. "We recovered the money and, I believe, changed the behavior of tech companies."

The case against YouTube was dismissed in 2023, but Trump's lawyers filed a motion to reopen it after Trump's election. Before the election of the 47th president, all three lawsuits faced legal challenges. A federal judge dismissed the complaint against Twitter in 2022, and the cases against Meta and YouTube were stayed and then administratively dismissed. However, Trump's lawyers, having appealed each decision, reopened the cases.

YouTube first suspended Trump's channel on January 12, 2021, for seven days after he posted a video in which he described his January 6 speech to supporters, preceding the storming of the Capitol, as "entirely appropriate." The platform cited "concerns about the ongoing risk of violence" for the suspension. The company later extended the ban indefinitely.

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It wasn't until March 2023, after Trump announced his intention to run for reelection, that YouTube reinstated his channel, stating that it had "carefully assessed the ongoing risk of real-world violence against the importance of ensuring voters have an equal opportunity to hear from leading candidates ahead of the election."

Hours after the channel was restored, Trump tweeted, "I'M BACK!" and posted an 11-second video of himself speaking at a rally, saying, "Sorry to keep you waiting. This is complicated. Very complicated."

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