A Northern District of California judge dismissed Google LLC.’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit that claims YouTube discriminates against content creators on its platform.
Previous Law Street Media coverage details that the aforementioned class action lawsuit, which alleges that YouTube denied equal access to content creators based of their racial and sexual identities; the class involved would total around 42 million people.
In June 2021 and again in July, the court dismissed the case, each time leaving leave to amend but finding that there was no basis for the plaintiffs’ claims of discrimination.
Monday’s order states that “The plaintiffs allege that YouTube’s algorithm violates the promise in the Community Guidelines because it considers the plaintiffs’ individual characteristics when deciding whether to remove, restrict, or monetize content.”
“But the complaint does not identify the characteristics that the algorithm has allegedly (and wrongfully) considered when making those decisions. More importantly, the complaint does not adequately allege that the plaintiffs have been treated differently based on those characteristics,” the judge wrote.
Finally, the order concludes, asserting that the plaintiffs have one final chance—in 21 days and 70 pages—to amend their complaint and should streamline and condense their amended complaint as much as possible.
The content creators are represented by Ellis George Cipollone O’Brien Annaguey and Henkel & Cohen. Google and YouTube are represented by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
