Google told to pay Australian politician $515,000 over defamatory YouTube videos

An Australian court ordered Google to pay A$715,000 ($515,000) to a former senior lawmaker on Monday after finding that a YouTube commentator’s “relentless, racist, vilificatory, abusive and defamatory campaign” drove him to quit politics prematurely.

The Federal Court found that Alphabet Inc’s Google, which owns content-sharing website YouTube, earned thousands of dollars by hosting two videos attacking the deputy premier of Australia’s most populous state New South Wales that were viewed nearly 800,000 times between them since being posted in late 2020.