No joy for trolled MP Nicolle Flint in battle with Google

Nicolle Flint has revealed her largely fruitless battle with Google to take action over two YouTube videos by left-wing blogger Friendly Jordies.

Retiring SA Liberal MP Nicolle Flint. Picture: Gary Ramage

Retiring Liberal MP Nicolle Flint has revealed her largely fruitless battle with Google to take action over two YouTube videos by left-wing blogger Friendly Jordies, which unleashed a torrent of sexualised abuse against her.

Ms Flint, who is quitting her Adelaide seat of Boothby at the election on account of the harassment she has faced, has documented her fight with the tech giant in a highly personal submission to parliament.

The submission to the Select Committee on Social Media and Online Safety outlines the social media abuse she suffered following two videos posted last year by Jordies, whose real name is ­Jordan Shanks, in which he called the MP “more transactional than herpes”, “the lowest form of life” and a “whiny little bitch” with “no morals, convictions or care”.

In the same videos, Shanks ­depicted ABC 7.30 host Leigh Sales as a rat, The Project host Lisa Wilkinson as a monkey and businesswoman Gina Rinehart as a pig.

Shanks on Monday night dismissed Ms Flint’s submission as a “disgusting” attack on freedom of political speech and said he was not aware of any of the comments to which she referred.

Ms Flint’s submission states that the first Shanks YouTube video, entitled “Bag Lady” in reference to her, had been viewed 187,171 times and has attracted 1040 comments.

“They include, for example, ­attacks on my appearance, vile ­attacks of a sexual nature, suggestions I should be sexually assaulted, and suggestions I should be suffocated,” Ms Flint wrote.

Google, YouTube’s parent company, originally dismissed Ms Flint’s inquiries, arguing that it regarded the videos as free speech and not in breach of its platform.

“Despite repeated requests to Google, they have refused to ­remove the video from YouTube, claiming that the video did not ‘meet the threshold’ for removal under YouTube’s Community Guidelines, nor those guidelines specifically relating to harassment and cyber-bullying,” Ms Flint’s submission says.

It was only when Ms Flint later identified specific viewer comments that Google removed the offending comments from Shanks’ YouTube page.

Google government affairs and public policy executive Samantha Yorke sent her this in reply: “We’ve taken another look at the videos as well as the comments sitting underneath each video. The videos were again found to not ­violate our policies, noting that there is a different standard applied to content featuring debates or discussions of topical issues concerning individuals who have positions of power such as politicians.

“We did however determine that there were multiple policy ­violations amongst the comments and I confirm that we have removed 56 comments related to the ‘Enemy to Women’ video and 23 comments related to the ‘Bag Lady’ video. We will continue to monitor these comments and will take further action if we see any new violative comments.”

Ms Flint told The Australian she regarded Google’s response to her as “a get-stuffed letter” that showed a lack of accountability on the company’s part as a publisher.

Her comments were ridiculed by Shanks, who also said he did not believe he could get a fair hearing in The Australian.