A group of content creators on YouTube has launched legal action against the Google video platform, which they accuse of discriminating against African-American artists. The plaintiffs "are bringing this lawsuit to redress the systematic, open and intentional racial discrimination perpetrated by Google / YouTube," they said in the preamble to their more than 200-page case, filed Tuesday in a federal court in California.
Kimberly Carleste Newman, Lisa Cabrera, Catherine Jones and Denotra Nicole Lewis consider that the platform exerts an inordinate power on the video contents available and on the way of earning income. The business model of YouTube, like most social networks, is based on very fine and very large advertising targeting. The prices paid by advertisers and the amounts received by creators depend on many parameters, including the number of subscribers to a channel or the number of views per video.
"The right demography"
The subsidiary of the American group "divides the video contents according to ethnicity, identity and points of view in order to sell advertisements to third parties, without taking care of the contents", argue the complainants. The platform "monetizes creators whose subscribers and the public fall into the 'good demographics' and pays them millions of dollars every month, whether these individuals comply with the rules of the network or not", they add. Google did not respond immediately.
A context of intense tensions in the United States
Each of the four creators further accuses YouTube of having removed videos, or even their channel, without valid reason or without reason. The lawsuit arises against a backdrop of tensions over racial equality issues in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people have mobilized on the streets and on social media to protest police violence and systemic racism, since the murder of George Floyd, an African-American, by a white police officer.
In response, some authorities launched reforms and many companies displayed their solidarity with donations, concrete initiatives and promises to recruit a more diverse workforce. Google, in particular, announced Wednesday the payment of $ 275 million to various causes to fight racial discrimination, including $ 100 million already promised by YouTube to support black artists.
In the past, the platform has already responded to accusations of discrimination (against LGBTQ, for example) by denying them as a whole, whether it be automated systems for advertising or moderation of content.