The Australian Federal Court has ordered Google to pay the former Deputy Premier of New South Wales (NSW) John Barilaro $715,000 (US$513,000) over a “vindictive” social media campaign.
In the videos, Shanks allegedly said that Barilaro was a corrupt conman who committed perjury nine times, involved in blackmail and should be imprisoned.
Last November, Barilaro settled the case against Shanks, in which the former NSW Nationals leader withdrew his claim while Shanks provided an apology, edited the videos and promised to pay the other party $100,000 in legal costs.
On Google’s side, the tech giant initially defended the case but eventually withdrew the defences and acknowledged that the two Youtube videos vilified Barilaro.
On June 6, Federal Court Justice Steven Rares said Google failed to take action against hate speech, cyberbullying, and harassment in this case as Barilaro suffered from a relentless, racist and abusive Youtube campaign for more than a year.
Barilaro testified that he had previously planned to quit politics at the 2023 NSW election but had to leave public office in October 2021 after encountering attacks from people wearing bruz shirts during a by-election.
Justice Rares found that Shanks’ Youtube campaign traumatised Barilaro and prompted him to resign prematurely.
Furthermore, it was found that Shanks was involved in cyberbullying by trying to intimidate Barilaro and his lawyers to prevent them from bringing a court action against him.
“Google was part and parcel of this disgusting behaviour because it facilitated, published and kept up on YouTube this and similar videos,” Justice Rares said.
Shortly after his settlement with Barilaro, Shanks said that the ordeal was far from over and repeated segments from earlier videos that decried Barilaro.
Justice Rares said that Google’s conduct was inappropriate and unjustifiable as it did nothing to stop Shanks’ actions on its YouTube platform.
“That conduct aggravated the damage to Mr Barilaro’s reputation and the hurt to his feelings very considerably,” he said.
“In my opinion, it is necessary to award a substantial sum in damages to compensate Mr Barilaro for the harm that Google caused to him and to vindicate his reputation.”
Meanwhile, Justice Rares has referred the conduct of Shanks and Google to the court’s principal registrar for potential proceedings against each of them for “serious contempts of court” by exerting pressure to prevent Barilaro and his lawyers from pursuing the case.
Additionally, the judge will hear from the parties to determine the amount of the costs order.
After receiving the ruling, Barilaro said although he felt vindicated, he wanted Google to issue an apology and remove the videos.
