A court in Australia has ordered Google to pay defamation damages to a former legislator in the amount of 715,000 Australian dollars (Ksh. 60,203,500).
On Monday, the Australian Federal Court ruled that the two recordings forced John Barilaro, the deputy premier of Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, to resign prematurely from politics.
The films, which were posted by political analyst Jordan Shanks, were described by Judge Steven Rares as a “relentless, racist, vilificatory, abusive, and defamatory campaign” against Barilaro.
The films questioned the former legislator’s character, including calling him “corrupt” without evidence and referring to him as “nothing less than hate speech,” according to the judge.
He found that Alphabet Inc’s Google, which owns the 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.
When Barilaro quit politics in October 2021, it was because he “was traumatised by Google’s and Mr Shanks’ campaign and … it caused him to leave public office prematurely”, Rares said.
“I found Google’s conduct in this proceeding to be improper and unjustifiable.”
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