President Donald Trump will receive another payday from a media conglomerate that four years ago attempted to stop the president from inciting violence. YouTube will pay President Trump $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit related to the suspension of Trump’s account after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, according to court documents filed today. $22 million of that sum will go toward a trust for the National Mall, which is handling the construction of Trump’s $200 million White House ballroom. The rest will go toward other plaintiffs in the case, including American Conservative Union and Naomi Wolf, the former feminist scholar turned Steve Bannon’s perpetual podcast guest. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the settlement “shall not constitute an admission of liability or fault on the part” of YouTube, which is essential to the Alphabet-owned video platform that attracts 122 million active users every day and will soon be filled with the type of content that led to our current downward spiral.
The news comes as YouTube prepares to reinstate the accounts of numerous creators who spread misinformation about COVID-19 and elections. YouTube’s capitulation aligns with the rest of the tech world, which has abandoned content moderation in recent years, allowing its platforms to fill up with hate speech, AI slop, and misinformation. After being acquired by Elon Musk, hate speech exploded on X, where Musk made drastic cuts to its trust and safety team, allowing the sixth most popular website on Earth to become 4chan. Earlier this year, Meta did the same, loosening restrictions that prevented the type of hate- and slur-filled comments that drive engagement. In less than a year, Meta had to change other rules, such as those regarding chatbots flirting with children and spreading medical misinformation. Previously, it had allowed such behavior.
YouTube is far from the only media organization to settle what many consider frivolous First Amendment cases. After Trump sued Disney and Paramount’s news organizations, both ABC and CBS paid Trump upwards of $15 million each to settle winnable cases. Meanwhile, social media apps, such as X and Meta, reinstated the president’s accounts, hoping he’d return to the flailing social media sites. The settlements and reinstatements have emboldened the 79-year-old techie president, who spent the weekend on his social media site, Truth Social, Truthing AI-generated videos about CBD treatments and the medbed. Born in conspiracy circles over the last few years, this fantastical machine, the medbed, cures all diseases simply by having the patient lie down in it. Mike Rothschild, a journalist focused on conspiracy theories, wrote on Bluesky that this theory has led “many MAGA believers” to refuse medical treatment because they “believe one day Trump or Q or NESARA will release medbed tech that will restore their health in minutes.”
