Judge rules in YouTube’s favor, dismissing racial discrimination suit

YouTube has earned yet another win in the court of law. In San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed a 2020 lawsuit brought by nine creators of color, who argued that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm discriminated against their videos on the basis of race.

The plaintiffs — including Black and Hispanic creators Lisa Cabrera, Catherine Jones, Denotra Nicole Lewis, and Kimberly Carleste Newman — filed a suit against YouTube in June 2020. The case began less than a month after the killing of George Floyd, which sparked a nationwide referendum on racial justice. In their original complaint, the creators alleged that YouTube and parent company Google “knowingly, intentionally, and systematically” used algorithmic de-ranking to “restrict access and drive them off YouTube.”

Chhabria did not contest the idea that YouTube’s algorithm could have a racial bias, but the federal judge ruled that the suing creators had not done enough to substantiate their allegations. As he dismissed the case with prejudice (which means it can’t be brought against YouTube again), he said that the creators did not provide enough examples to support their claims, and some of the examples they did provide worked against their arguments.

As an example, Chhabria cited a satirical makeup tutorial that taught viewers how to create Donald Trump’s “distinctive look.” References to white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan could have led to trouble with the YouTube algorithm, thus undermining the plaintiff’s claims of racial bias. Chhabria said that the creator behind that video “certainly appears to be joking around, likely in an effort to mock white supremacists, but this would readily explain the differential treatment by the algorithm.”

The 2020 lawsuit had many similarities to a 2019 case, in which eight creators argued that YouTube’s algorithm discriminates against LGBTQ content. YouTube and Google defeated the suit in 2021.

YouTube has recently defended itself against multiple lawsuits that raised questions about its automated products. In May 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court defended YouTube’s Section 230 protections, ruling that the video platform was not responsible for the 2015 ISIS attacks in Paris even though its algorithm allegedly promoted terrorist content. About a month later, musician Maria Schneider ran out of steam in a court battle that targeted the Content ID system.