A federal court in Australia has ordered Google to pay more than ,500,000 in damages for damaging a politician’s reputation through YouTube videos.
According to French media, an Australian comedian had uploaded a series of videos on YouTube when John Barrelro was the Deputy Prime Minister of the state of New South Wales in 2020.
The comedian, known as “Friendly Jordes”, made videos in Italian accent accusing John Barellaro of corruption.
Barrelro called the videos racist and wept in court after watching one of the videos, which was filmed by Friendly Jordis in a luxury house rented by a politician.
“I am shocked by this,” he told the court.
Towards the end of 2021, an agreement was reached between John Barellaro and comedian Jordan Shanks, under which Jordan agreed to issue an apology and edit the videos.
These videos have been viewed more than a million times on YouTube.
Google, which owns YouTube, initially defended the lawsuit, but the search company later backtracked.
Justice Steven Ryers has ordered Google to pay damages since December 2020, blaming Google for damaging Barreiro’s reputation.
John Barrelro’s lawyers wrote a letter to the company demanding the removal of “offensive” videos.
The judge ruled that the release of Google videos forced Barreiro to resign prematurely. He resigned from parliament in October 2020 and was shocked.