Legal Action Prompts Google to Block Antisemitic Content in Spain
Some antisemitic content will no longer appear in Spain’s Google results, thanks to legal action taken by The Lawfare Project on behalf of a group of Spanish Jews.
A Lawfare Project statement published on Tuesday said, “Google LLC has reached an understanding with our lawyers in Spain to block defamatory content, including material promoting Nazi ideology and denying the Holocaust that is scornful with the victims.”
“As a result of a mutual understanding with Google, Lawfare Project lawyers acting for Spanish Jewish claimants filed several take-down notices with Google LLC identifying content in its search results that included extreme and defamatory racism against the Jewish people,” the statement continued. “Google’s lawyers examined the complaints and, subsequently, various examples of antisemitic content identified in the notices are now blocked from appearing in Google searches in Spain. This includes articles published by the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website promoting extreme racism against Jews and others.”
“To the best of the knowledge of the parties involved, this is the first time that Google has blocked illegal content against the Jewish people based on defamation complaints,” The Lawfare Project noted.
Lawfare Project Executive Director Brooke Goldstein said, “For many, the road to antisemitic radicalization is through an online search result. It is unacceptable, immoral, and unlawful in Spain for online platforms to profit from extreme and violent propaganda against Jews. The Lawfare Project will continue to support such actions in Europe to get tech firms to clean up their act.”
The Lawfare Project’s Spanish counsel, Ignacio Wenley Palacios, said, “The cooperation with Google LLC has been instrumental in distilling from the case law of our Constitutional Court clear concepts of illegal content regarding Jews as a vulnerable minority and victims of the Holocaust that both uphold free speech to the utmost level allowed by the European Convention on Human Rights, while following the standards of the European Court of Justice. The company committed to examine under such criteria our blocking notices, blocking from search results links that led to such content. Acting on this commitment, new examples of extreme, racist content addressed to Jews have been blocked from Google Search.”