Start shining the dance floor …
YouTube on Monday agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump, and the bulk of the money will go toward the construction of the new White House ballroom.
Trump sued the Alphabet-owned video sharing platform in July 2021, alleging that YouTube unlawfully silenced conservative viewpoints after the company suspended his account in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.
The Trust for the National Mall, the nonprofit group raising private donations to build the $200 million ballroom on the White House grounds, will be paid $22 million by the tech company as part of the settlement.
The remainder of the settlement money will go to other plaintiffs in the case, including the American Conservative Union.
Trump announced plans for the privately-funded, 90,000-square-foot “White House State Ballroom,” in July.
The ballroom will be situated in the East Wing and be able to fit 650 people.
Construction is expected to be completed before Trump’s term ends in early 2029.
YouTube was the last of the major social media companies sued by Trump over Capitol riot-related bans to settle.
Meta and X settled similar lawsuits brought by the president earlier this year, to the tune of $25 million and $10 million, respectively. --->READ MORE HERE
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| REUTERS |
Last week, after years of leftist mockery, Google finally admitted conservatives were right all along about online censorship.
On Sept. 23, the tech giant’s lawyers sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee stating the obvious: Former President Joe Biden’s administration applied “repeated and sustained” pressure on the company to silence his political opponents.
Biden’s tactics were “unacceptable and wrong,” the attorneys declared.
Pop the champagne corks!
But before the party gets underway, let’s be clear-eyed about what really happened here: Google admitted little, promised less — and pledged to change nothing.
It offered not confession but evasion.
Here’s what Google’s letter really told Congress.
1. Google revealed nothing new
Mark Zuckerberg already confessed, twice, that Biden officials repeatedly demanded Facebook censor conservatives and suppress important content, even describing the White House staff as “screaming” and “cursing” at Facebook’s employees.
Elon Musk went further — the Twitter Files laid the censorship playbook bare in 2022.
With years to get it right, Google’s carefully lawyered letter added nothing to the record.
2. Google admitted no wrongdoing
After numerous self-congratulatory paragraphs about how responsive, helpful and transparent it’s now being, the company never once admitted that its vast censorship efforts — and its even more pervasive manipulation of political content — were wrong.
It even misled Congress, falsely indicating that it did not target stories pertaining to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
That must have shocked truth-tellers like Jennifer Zeng, Matt Taibbi and Bret Weinstein, who know firsthand that the company silenced origin stories after announcing in 2020 that it was actively using fact-check panels to counter COVID claims.
Instead, Google wrapped itself in generalities: “It is unacceptable and wrong when any government . . . attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content.”
Note the key phrase — any government. That is less contrition than warning.
With multiple ongoing congressional investigations and even more possible enforcement actions by regulatory agencies, Google’s message to Republicans is unmistakable: We’ll use every bit of our $3 trillion of wealth to resist you.
In its own words, it “will not bend to political pressure.”
3. Google volunteered nothing --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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