Google ordered to pay Australian politician over defamatory YouTube videos

 SYDNEY: An Australian court on Monday ordered Google to pay a former lawmaker A$715,000 ($515,000), saying its failure to take down a YouTuber’s “relentless, racist, vilificatory, abusive and defamatory campaign” of videos drove him out of politics.

The Federal Court found the Alphabet Inc company, which owns content-sharing website YouTube, made money by broadcasting two videos attacking the then-deputy premier of New South Wales - Australia’s most populous state - that have been viewed nearly 800,000 times since being posted in late 2020.

Google has been found liable for defamation before, generally for supplying links to articles in search results, but Monday’s ruling is one of the first where the firm was deemed an active publisher - via YouTube - of content that defamed an elected official.

In Australia, a review of defamation law is examining whether online platforms should be held accountable for defamatory content they host. Google and other internet giants argue they cannot be reasonably expected to police all posts.

A Google spokesperson was not available for comment. The court heard that content creator Jordan Shanks uploaded videos in which he repeatedly brands lawmaker John Barilaro “corrupt” without citing credible evidence, and calls him names attacking his Italian heritage which the judge, Steve Rares, said amounted to “nothing less than hate speech”.

By continuing to publish the content, Google breached its own policies of protecting public figures from being unfairly targeted and “drove Mr Barilaro prematurely from his chosen service in public life and traumatised him significantly,” Rares said.

Barilaro quit politics a year after Shanks posted the videos, and “Google cannot escape its liability for the substantial damage that Mr Shanks’ campaign caused,” Rares added.

Shanks, who has 625,000 YouTube subscribers and 346,000 followers on Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook, was a co-defendant until a settlement with Barilaro last year which involved the YouTuber editing the videos and paying the former politician A$100,000.

But Shanks “needed YouTube to disseminate his poison (and) Google was willing to join Mr Shanks in doing so to earn revenue as part of its business model,” the judge said.

Before the lawsuit was resolved, Shanks had continued to attack Barilaro and his lawyers publicly, and the judge said he would refer him and Google to the authorities “for what appear to be serious contempts of court by bringing improper pressure … not to pursue this proceeding”.

In a Facebook post after the ruling, Shanks, who goes by the handle friendlyjordies, mocked Barilaro by saying “you finally scored the coin from Google … without ever having the truth tested in court”.

Shanks added, without evidence, that Barilaro “withdrew (his) action against us so we wouldn’t testify or present our evidence” in support of his claims. Barilaro told reporters outside the courthouse that he felt “cleared and vindicated”.

“It was never about money,” he said. “It was about an apology, removal. Of course, now an apology is worthless after the campaign has continued. It’s taken a court to force Google’s hand.”

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European Union countries and EU lawmakers on Saturday clinched a deal on new rules requiring tech giants to do more to police illegal content on their platforms and to pay a fee to regulators monitoring their compliance.

The agreement came after more than 16 hours of negotiations. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is the second prong of EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's strategy to rein in Alphabet GOOGL.O unit Google, Meta FB.O and other U.S. tech giants.

"We have a deal on the DSA: The Digital Services Act will make sure that what is illegal offline is also seen and dealt with as illegal online - not as a slogan, as reality," Vestager said in a tweet.

Under the DSA, the companies face fines up to 6% of their global turnover for violating the rules while repeated breaches could see them banned from doing business in the EU.

The new rules ban targeted advertising aimed at children or based on sensitive data such as religion, gender, race and political opinions. Dark patterns, which are tactics that mislead people into giving personal data to companies online, will also be prohibited.

The companies also face a yearly fee up to 0.05% of worldwide annual revenue to cover the costs of monitoring their compliance.

The 27-country bloc and lawmakers last month backed Vestager's landmark rules called the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that could force Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft to change their core business practices in Europe.

The judgment showed Google had denied the videos carried defamatory imputations, and said the YouTuber had the right to an honestly held opinion and should be protected by the right to criticise a politician.

A Google spokesperson was not available for comment.

"They (Google) were advised that those defamatory videos were there, they looked into it, they decided for themselves that they weren't, and left them up," said Prof David Rolph, a specialist in media law at the University of Sydney Law School.

"That's an orthodox application of the basic principles of publication in defamation law (but) leaves the larger question about whether we need to reform the principles of publication."

HATE SPEECH

The court heard that content creator Jordan Shanks uploaded videos in which he repeatedly brands lawmaker John Barilaro "corrupt" without citing credible evidence, and calls him names attacking his Italian heritage which the judge, Steve Rares, said amounted to "nothing less than hate speech".

By continuing to publish the content, Rares said Google breached its own policies aimed at protecting public figures from being unfairly targeted, and "drove Mr Barilaro prematurely from his chosen service in public life and traumatised him significantly."

Barilaro quit politics a year after Shanks posted the videos, and "Google cannot escape its liability for the substantial damage that Mr Shanks' campaign caused," Rares said.

Shanks, who has 625,000 YouTube subscribers and 346,000 followers on Meta Platforms Inc's Facebook, was a co-defendant until a settlement with Barilaro last year which involved the YouTuber editing the videos and paying the former politician A$100,000.

But Shanks "needed YouTube to disseminate his poison (and) Google was willing to join Mr Shanks in doing so to earn revenue as part of its business model," the judge said.

Before the lawsuit was resolved, Shanks continued to make disparaging comments about Barilaro and his lawyers in YouTube videos, and the judge said he would refer him and Google to the authorities "for what appear to be serious contempts of court by bringing improper pressure ... not to pursue this proceeding".

In a Facebook post after the ruling, Shanks, who goes by the handle friendlyjordies, mocked Barilaro, saying "you finally scored the coin from Google ... without ever having the truth tested in court".

Shanks added, without evidence, that Barilaro "withdrew (his) action against us so we wouldn't testify or present our evidence" in support of the YouTuber's claims.

Barilaro told reporters outside the courthouse that he felt "cleared and vindicated".

"It was never about money," he said. "It was about an apology, removal. Of course, now an apology is worthless after the campaign has continued. It's taken a court to force Google's hand."

($1 = 1.3883 Australian dollars)