Justice Steven Rares today said the videos of Mr Shanks, better known as FriendlyJordies, constituted a "relentless and vicious campaign against Mr Barilaro".
He accepted the [now] retired politician was "traumatised" and said Google had failed to take responsibility for its conduct as a publisher.
Justice Rares noted Mr Shanks had called Mr Barilaro "disgusting" names and related him to the Mario brothers from Nintendo's video games.
"Although Mr Shanks styles himself as a comedian, his repeated use of such terms was not comedic," the judge said
"It was nothing less than racist hate speech."
Google probably wanted this outcome so they can police youtube more
Politicians have been attacking social media platforms for removing content. Google can now point to this ruling and say they are justified in doing it.
Google itself doesn't really want to police YouTube more since that costs money. The government and rich people and their corporations definitely do.
Having worked in the space, yes they don't want to spend more money on policing content. However, their advertisers put pressure on them to classify and remove content so their ads aren't displayed near something that could paint them in a bad light. Also most videos on youtube don't generate very much revenue so they want more control over deleting them if someone complains. Politicians are itching to regulate them so they are treading lightly right now.
FriendlyJordies isn't even a Socialist (he's just a SocDem who lives in a wealthy Sydney suburb) and our Bourgeois government can't even tolerate criticism from someone like him. Really speaks to how right Australia has drifted over the last decade alone.
