When Donald Trump walked out of the White House in January 2021, he also found himself locked out of Silicon Valley. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all suspended or banned the outgoing president in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot.
At the time, executives at these tech giants argued Trump’s online presence was a danger to public safety. To Trump and his supporters, however, the bans were proof of political censorship on an unprecedented scale.
Fast forward nearly five years. In September 2025, YouTube agreed to pay Trump and his co-plaintiffs $24.5 million(Sh 3.21 billion) to settle a lawsuit over his suspension.
The deal follows similar settlements earlier this year: Meta paid $25 million(Sh 3.28 billion), and X (formerly Twitter) paid roughly $10 million(Sh 1.31 billion).
Taken together, these payouts amount to nearly $60 million(Sh 7.86 billion) in compensation to Trump and affiliated plaintiffs.
For Trump, who has returned to the Oval Office after his reelection in 2024, the settlement is a symbolic win against Big Tech, an industry he has long accused of conspiring against conservatives.
For YouTube, the deal was a way to end years of legal uncertainty, avoid damaging court precedents, and quietly move on.
According to court filings, the $24.5 million settlement will be distributed as follows:
$22 million(Sh 2.88 billion) will go to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit organization involved in Trump’s pet project to build a new State Ballroom near the White House.
$2.5 million(Sh 328 million) will be split among co-plaintiffs, including the American Conservative Union and author Naomi Wolf, who joined Trump’s lawsuit claiming they too had been harmed by platform suspensions.
Importantly, YouTube did not admit wrongdoing. The settlement explicitly states that the payout is not a concession that the suspension violated Trump’s rights or that YouTube’s content moderation policies were flawed.
Instead, the company described the agreement as a “business decision” designed to avoid prolonged litigation.
The case was initially filed in 2021 as part of Trump’s broad legal offensive against social media platforms.
His legal team, argued that banning a sitting or former president amounted to unconstitutional censorship.
The lawsuits lingered for years, winding their way through lower courts and appeals, before settlement talks gained momentum after Trump’s reelection in 2024.
In campaign-style remarks, Trump framed the payout as proof that the technology sector had been politically motivated in its decision to deplatform him. He told supporters that Silicon Valley had tried to “silence the voice of the American people,” but now had been forced to pay up
Earlier in 2025, Meta (Facebook/Instagram) paid $25 million to resolve its own lawsuit with Trump while X (Twitter) paid approximately $10 million to Trump and co-plaintiffs.
The settlement raises thorny questions about free speech, corporate responsibility, and political power.
