YouTuber Marshall Daniels, who posts content under the pseudonym “Young Pharaoh,” was ordered by a court to pay $38,576 in attorney fees to YouTube for filing a lawsuit that the court said “lacked merit.”
The court ruled that his complaint “clearly lacked merit and was frivolous from the outset.”
Daniels, who filed the complaint in 2020, claimed that he was the victim of “reverse censorship.” He filed the complaint after two of his videos were removed and his account demonetized. One of the videos criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci while the other criticized the George Floyd protests.
According to Daniels, the videos were removed because of political pressure, not for violating the platform’s guidelines. He claimed that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) coerced YouTube to remove the videos by making claims that suggested that Section 230 would not cover platforms that allow the spread of “misinformation.”
“None of his arguments are persuasive, as he articulated no plausible legal theory—novel or otherwise—for holding private entities liable as government actors in the circumstances presented,” the judge ruled.
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