Barilaro John (John Barilaro)

Barilaro John (John Barilaro)

Biography

2022: Google to pay $515,000 to official for YouTube videos falsely accused of bribes and fraud

In early June 2022, it became known that Google would pay AU $715 thousand (about 515 thousand US dollars) to former Deputy Prime Minister of New South Wales John Barilaro. The company acknowledged that videos posted on the YouTube platform about Barilaro contain false allegations of corruption and fraud.

In 2021, John Barilaro filed a lawsuit in Federal Court against Google, which owns YouTube, as well as political commentator Jordan Shanks in connection with two videos published on the Friendlyjordies channel in 2020 and accusing Barilaro of corruption. The first spot, bruz, was dedicated to Barilaro and filmed inside his investment property in the Southern Highlands of NSW over a duration of more than 26 minutes. In the second, called the secret dictatorship, Barilaro is mentioned in passing.

Barilaro sued the corporation and political commentator Jordan Shanks last year over two YouTube videos where the latter accused the deputy prime minister of corruption. The first video was shot on the territory of Barilaro's property, and in the second video, the commentator mentioned it and accused the official of bribes, including $3.3 million for a beef company, theft of water, blackmail of advisers, as well as withholding millions of dollars stolen from the state.

Judge Stephen Rares ruled Barilaro was traumatised by a campaign of relentless cyberbullying by comedian Jordan Shanks, who uses the pseudonym Friendlyjordies. The court concluded that Google employees did nothing to prevent Shanks' hate speech on her YouTube platform. The judge pointed out that the videos provoked many hateful posts and posts on social networks. As a result, John Barilaro, who planned to resign in 2023, left his post in 2021.

After the verdict, John Barilaro said that he felt vindicated and all he wanted from the very beginning was for Google to remove video materials defaming his honor, but the company refused. Barilaro added that it was not easy for a private person to take on a company like Google, but it was important for him to do this for the sake of principle.^[1]

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