Black video creators said YouTube unjustly restricted their content. A judge disagreed.
Nine Black plaintiffs claimed YouTube violated a legal responsibility to offer race-neutral content moderation by placing more limitations on their videos than on similar clips from whites.
A federal judge’s decision has led to the dismissal of a class-action lawsuit accusing YouTube of restricting or removing videos from Black and Latino content creators.
Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that while YouTube’s algorithm can be biased against users based on race, the suit’s nine Black plaintiffs “do not come close” to suggesting they were the victims of discrimination, according to Reuters.
The plaintiffs initially filed the lawsuit in June 2020, less than a month after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. They revised the lawsuit five times before Chhabria dismissed the case with prejudice Thursday, preventing it from being filed again.
According to the plaintiffs, YouTube, owned by Alphabet’s Google, violated a legal responsibility under its terms of service to offer race-neutral content moderation by placing more limitations on their videos than on similarly submitted videos from white contributors.
The judge, however, asserted that YouTube did not claim that its algorithm was perfect; rather, it just stated that it would not treat individuals differently depending on their identities. He added that the plaintiffs relied on an inadequate sample of videos, some of which harmed their argument.
Chhabria gave YouTube’s prohibition of one plaintiff’s “makeup tutorial” on achieving Donald Trump‘s “distinctive look” as an example, claiming it could reflect a plaintiff bringing up the Ku Klux Klan and referring to lighter makeup colors as symbols of white supremacy.
He acknowledged that although the plaintiff “certainly appears to be joking around,” probably to mock white supremacists, such a video would easily explain the algorithm’s disparate treatment of the plaintiff.
Chhabria added that specific accusations preceded a recent revision to YouTube’s community guidelines and that the video-hosting platform “cannot be liable for breaching a promise it had not yet made.”
Reuters reported that neither YouTube nor the plaintiffs’ attorneys immediately responded to requests for comment.
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