Google set to pay John Barilaro $715k for publishing ‘racist’ Friendly Jordies videos
John Barilaro, former deputy premier of New South Wales is set to receive $715,000 in defamation damages from Google, as a result of videos posted by comedian Jordan Shanks, aka Friendlyjordies.
Barilaro took the tech company to the Federal Court over two separate videos, published in 2020, citing the fact they had not been removed. He said the videos included “racial slurs”, in reference to his Italian heritage.
The ruling this morning accepted Barilaro’s claim that he had been traumatised by the videos, and with Justice Steven Rares also assessing it as being a part of a “relentless and vicious campaign” against the former deputy premier, with Google failing to take action as the publisher of the content.
This is the undoing of the tech giants. In the US Section – 230 aka the Shield Law is the only thing protecting big tech from an unstoppable tidal wave of litigation. If Meta, Google and Twitter can be sued every time someone says something defamatory about someone else because they published it, then they can’t survive, at least not in their current form. About time they lived up to the same standards as any other publisher.
Google withdrawing their defence and conceding the case is a pretty shocking move, most notably because it will provide a huge precedent for similar cases to be tried in the US.
Going to be difficult for Google to invoke Section 230 when they’ve essentially agreed they are a publisher of content in the Australian market.