An Australian court has ordered Google to pay more than half a million U.S. dollars to an official who was hounded out of politics by two “relentless, racist, vilificatory, abusive and defamatory” videos that the company refused to take down from YouTube. Australia is one of the few countries in the world where social-media platforms are held legally responsible for the content they host, as though they were publishers. The Federal Court found that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had deliberately profited from hosting two videos personally attacking John Barilaro, then deputy premier of New South Wales state. The videos have been viewed 800,000 times since being posted in 2020 by YouTube Jordan Shanks. Barilaro left politics the following year and Judge Steve Rares said “Google cannot escape its liability for the substantial damage that Mr Shanks’ campaign caused.” He said Google’s willingness to disseminate Shanks’ “poison” had been part of its “business model.”
Read it at Reuters
