A court in Australia has ordered Google to pay a former legislator some 715,000 Australian dollars (US$0.515 million) in defamation damages over two videos posted to YouTube.
The Australian Federal Court found on Monday that the two videos drove John Barilaro, the deputy premier of Australia’s most populous state New South Wales, to quit politics prematurely.
Judge Steven Rares said the videos, which were posted by political commentator Jordan Shanks amounted to a “relentless, racist, vilificatory, abusive and defamatory campaign” against Barilaro.
The videos questioned the former legislator’s integrity, including labelling him “corrupt” without evidence, and called him racist names that were “nothing less than hate speech”, the judge said.
He found that Alphabet Inc’s Google, which owns content-sharing website YouTube, earned thousands of dollars by hosting the two videos but failed to apply its own policies to prevent hate speech, cyberbullying and harassment.
The videos were viewed nearly 800,000 times between them since being posted in late 2020.
