Legal Precedent or Political Expediency: The Controversy Surrounding The Big Tech Settlements With The President

YouTube, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, has agreed to pay a total of $24.5 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump. The lawsuit alleged that the video platform had wrongfully suspended his channel in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, claiming that the company had unlawfully censored conservative voices. The settlement is the latest in a series of multimillion dollar payouts from major technology companies to the president over his temporary deplatforming.

The lawsuit was filed by President Trump against YouTube and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai after his channel was suspended in January 2021. At the time, YouTube, along with other social media platforms, cited "concerns about the ongoing potential for violence" as the reason for the suspension, which violated the platform's policies against inciting violence. The president's legal team argued that the platform had accumulated too much power and that his suspension was an act of political censorship based on vague and shifting standards. YouTube eventually reinstated the channel in March 2023.

A significant portion of the settlement, $22 million, will be directed on President Trump’s behalf to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit organization. The funds are earmarked for supporting the construction of a new State Ballroom at the White House, a project expected to cost approximately $200 million. The remaining $2.5 million will be paid to other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which included the American Conservative Union.

The settlement does not include any admission of wrongdoing or liability by YouTube and was reached solely to compromise disputed claims and avoid further litigation expenses and risks. Legal experts have previously suggested that the legal claims in the lawsuit, which challenged a private company’s content moderation decisions on First Amendment grounds, faced significant hurdles in court. However, the resolution comes as the tech industry has shown a more conciliatory posture toward the administration since the president’s return to office.

This agreement follows similar settlements earlier this year, including a $25 million payment from Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, and a $10 million payment from X (formerly Twitter), both resolving lawsuits over the suspension of the president's accounts after the Capitol riot. The combined total from these three major social media platform settlements is approximately $60 million. The settlements are seen by some observers as a politically motivated move by Big Tech to curry favor with the current administration amid pending regulatory and legal issues affecting their businesses.