Bitcoin Forum

Steve Wozniak Sues YouTube Over Twitter-Like Bitcoin Scam


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-23/steve-wozniak-sues-youtube-over-twitter-like-bitcoin-scam

Steve W. is not the first high profile personalities that sue Youtube over this scam. Brad Garlinghouse of XRP, https://fortune.com/2020/04/21/ripple-sues-youtube-scam-videos-crypto-garlinghouse/.

I think Youtube should step up and better police their service with this rampant fake giveaways promoted on their platform. It's about time, specially on what had happen to Twitter in recent days.

This is a bad news for both YouTube and bitcoin. Google should evolve with new regulations to protect similar occurrence in the future.

This might affect the increase in adoption of bitcoin and other altcoins.

I wonder if Elon Musk and Co will try to sue Twitter over the previous hacks too. As for Steve, I think this could be positive in the long run. I mean, the blame again goes to the provider Youtube, not to Bitcoin. As far as I remember Wozniak always has been a supporter of Bitcoin movement so I doubt bad intentions towards cryptos. Beside all that, I also think the fact that it gets media coverage is good and to put the finger on youtube and not let them get away could be benefitial as well for Youtube users later on.

That's a different case, they can sue Twitter for the security breach but it will be a real debate if Twitter as a company is actually at fault here, since they claim their staff was the target of a social engineering attack, so they could get away blaming others.

For the Wozniak case, it's straight sailing:
he notified them multiple times that some channels are running a scam, they are using his name, his face, his reputation and they didn't do anything. And at the same time, they are deleting videos with more than 5 seconds from a movie trailer or 10 seconds from an open air concert, they will have no defense since their mechanism should have instantly flagged all that content showing him

If you look at their policies they are very strict with certain political statements and they will delete the videos in seconds but you can find scam promotions without any issues and it is a good step taken by Steve Wozniak as they should delete these scam promotion like they censor other contents and the scammers are making a good run with the platform for a long time and even if we report them rarely do they delete the contents.

yeah, I think he is doing the right thing, because this can lead to many people getting scam on behalf of his name, some innocent people will think he is the one behind it not knowing it is the work of scammers,
I wonder how youtube can allow such a thing, they should have known the danger of this knd of action.

It's right time everyone step up against these scammers, the blame should be vented on YouTube for their negligence towards swinging into action when reports were made by Steve Wozniak. Does this mean that, YouTube are also hiding something from us? Maybe they should tell us what they know about series of scammed that has taken place in their platform. How could someone made reports about his reputation be touted and still no action was done to Savage the situation.

Negligence would be the appropriate word, as we all know, they really have relax policy on fake giveaways using Steve or Elon Musk and others photos or videos and most of the time they are late in taking down the videos as it has already scammed a lot of people. I remember one Elon Musk fake giveaways, who stayed in Youtube and they taken it down two hours later, but the scammer have run more than $200k already. They should take notice of this alarming number of scammers in their platform.

It seems that even Steve is the one reporting it, YouTube hasn't taken any action. I thought that they'll do an action if it's coming from someone prominent. YouTube has to set standards for their ads and review it at least before allowing it to be broadcasted.

I mean, Google does deserve a little slap in the face for the way they were unable to manage these fake Bitcoin ads and giveaways for so long already. I've been saying it so many times: it's almost as if they really want these scams to be around. AI or not, I think at this point it's quite obvious there's a need for human manual verification of Google Ads containing keywords such as "Bitcoin" and "cryptocurrencies" for example. I doubt there are so many legit requests for Google Ads they wouldn't be able to handle them. Most YT "giveaways" have very similar keywords that could be filtered out. A channel that never had a Bitcoin video on it could be flagged as suspicious, for example.

They shouldn't wait for this kind of action for Steve et al, it's obvious that they are slacking here with hundreds of Bitcoin scam running at this very moment. And you can't really understand why would Youtube can't cope up with this videos spreading like wild fire and it seems they are helping those scammers in some way?

Last December they did a full sweep and remove all related crypto channels. So it can really be done, and I think Steve is doing the right thing here, to call their attention again and don't like this scam flourish on their platform.

While this would be the best case scenario by a long shot, let's see, youtube has their own cards they can play, we know it's all negligence but the final call is had inside a court and common sense is not guaranteed. Just think of the pedophile videos that have been posted for years on both youtube and instagram and nothing is being done about it :)

I believe it's all automated these days and only videos with huge numbers of human reports might get reviewed by a human. This is how they do these 5 second deletions, demonetization of anything featuring a swastika, etc. But the last time they tried to fight crypto scams, people were crying about censorhip and how evil Google hates crypto.

Google really needs to roll out some algorithms for detecting crypto scams, train a neural network or something, but maybe they are ignoring it because it's a low priority compared to other issues. Maybe this legal case will make them move in that direction. Especially if other people will join, because Wozniak isn't the only one who gets his image used by scammers.

If this was a new case where scammers just recently used his face, Youtube could've honestly salvaged the situation still. Sadly it's been on for months and youtube has been doing nothing, which is oddly weird imo. They're algorithm has been ruining some people's experience in live streaming in youtube and yet they allow these kinds of situations, which imo, a lot more worse than some simple gore scenes and the like.


The case where people where fighting for crypto was about just crypto-related vids tbh. Yes, I think Youtube/Google was fighting against the scams and just literally steamrolled even those that weren't a scams, and that's what people were mad for. Cause of that, they probably just stopped caring and let the vids go on, scam or not. It's odd how they aren't filtering these vids, not only vids but also the ads they have on Google possibly as well as their extensions if possible.

Youtube is really that lazy. They were informed and yet they still didn't make move FOR A MONTH. They relied and believe too much on their bot that doesn't really help but cause more harm to the community of the platform and now they are paying the price for it.

It is much better this way. If Youtube won't respond within a relatively long period of time despite the multiple communication attempts from the aggrieved person himself then perhaps a legal action would compel them to give due attention to it sooner rather than later.

This is actually good for all parties concerned, for Youtube so that they shape up and provide better sifting mechanism for videos, for Steve to finally save his name from all these scammers, and for all Youtube users all over the world who could fall to these scams and lose money. 

I guess he had to take action on his own since youtube have failed to do what is right by them, this is his reputation at stake, if I was in his shoes I would do the same, infact, I would make a video about the issue and pin to my social media handle to warn people from falling victim to cheap scammers,
Youtube should take swift action with stuff like this instead stalling and wasting time, we just recently witnesse what happened with twitter and now this, that incident should have thought them a lesson to be more vigilant, report every and any suspicious event, Steve did the right thing.

Speaking of Youtube being used by XRP last April, they already file a motion to dismiss the case,

And guess what's their reply to the argument ,"not their responsibility".

https://decrypt.co/36467/youtube-rebuffs-ripple-lawsuit-xrp-scams-dismissal

https://www.law360.com/media/articles/1294076/youtube-says-it-can-t-be-held-liable-for-crypto-scam-vids

why bitcoin?
youtube, google, twitter,... are all centralized platforms where there is an owner and they have full control on how people use their platform and what can or can not be published there. so they are liable for what is published too. but bitcoin has no owner, no centralized authority and these scams are not bitcoin related, they are just using bitcoin. it is like saying federal reserve is responsible each time someone scams with US dollar!

This has been going over for a year with different crypto based personality and prominent tech figures. Many legit looking channels with thousands of followers have been giving fake bitcoins with an unrelated real video as a frame. There are plenty of such videos presenting CZ from binance and Elon Musk. I have on multiple time reported those videos and Youtube also takes them down after a while.

Youtube's inability to stop these scams had led to this sue. Other celebrities should also follow the footstep of Steve Wozniak. The number of scams using celebrity names has increased a lot on Youtube after the Twitter incident.

Such incidents are tarnishing the reputation of prominent celebrities and also the community. In my opinion it is the responsibility of the social media platform to control and keep a check of activities happening on their platform.

Mmh, Youtube could come up with a similar excuse, it just wouldn´t sound honest and easy to see through though. I understand that Twitter might use a random developer as a scapegoat, but that´s a solution for Youtube too. Whatever may happens, I hope they do something and work on the issue and not decide to ignore it like Microsoft does with it´s coding mistakes....

I've seen some ads too regarding these crypto giveaways and this can be a bad sign for the Youtube.

I've seen some popular names in that ads including Vitalik Buterin and it is stated on the ad that he is conducting an ETH Giveaway. Like WTF is happening with Youtube. Do they have a team which are observing the ads that are being put in the video. Maybe the case that he is suing too isn't the one that I've seen days ago but the fact that it falls into a crypto giveaway which will turn out to be a scam is a proof that Youtube must adjust with regards to their advertisements.

This can be a huge problem to Youtube but I think that they can handle it and will take massive action to this problem.

Yeah, it's all automatic and scammers know that you can trick detections with changed screens, minimizing the window with the copyrighted material like PiP (Picture-in-Picture) or adding layers with different information like price ticker or a newsbar. Automatic detection might fail, but you need to step up a response when some type of videos are reported. I'm pretty sure youtube treats scams with low priority and the lawsuit of Wozniak shows that maybe they have internal faster ticket support when it comes to verified publishers but whatever it was it's clearly ineffective!

As fo the other scams, it's pretty hard to take a stance against them, where do you put the limit on what is considered a scam, should we ban shills for a project we know it's impossible to be realized and it will be a failure? Everyone knew Juicero (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero) as a piece of sh*** but you can't stop a company from selling crap.


Doubt it, twitter can blame the third party for the hack of their employee details, Youtube can't blame a staff they trained for his laziness, it would be like a repair shop telling you to sue the employee for not fixing your airbag or a restaurant telling you to sue the meat shop for the rotten meat. They simply didn't do their job, they ignored it and reacted too late. But I have a feeling they will settle this outside the court and in reality, nothing will be drastically improved, probably the solution involves increasing support by a huge number and that costs money.

Unless their AI had a facial representation of Steve Wozniak's face then automating reporting of such videos is very difficult since if it's not written to intake "clues" from the video to determine who, if it's an influential person, is featured in the video it can't tell the difference between "Steve Wozniak making a promotion" and "a person making a promotion". I'm sure Youtube can already detect the presence of people in a video.

Maybe youtube partners get a higher priority in having their reports processed? That might explain why things like these tend to stay up while copyrighted content is deleted fairly quickly.

Indeed, YouTube related to video scams is very slow response, I also sometimes upset to see video scams circulating on YouTube.
Hopefully with Steve Wozniak sues YouTube, there will be strict action from YouTube for video scams that are still circulating.
So the victims of the video promotion scams can be minimized, I often make report to YouTube related to video scams. But YouTube
responds around 3-5 days, and this is too long in my opinion.

I've seen verified Youtube accounts getting hacked, renamed and used to impersonate Binance with a live stream about a 'giveaway'. When I saw it months ago, I've contacted Binance and filed a complaint with Youtube. The streams continued for a couple of days before Youtube or someone sorted it out. That's a long time IMO. But months of fake Steve Wozniak is way longer, so I understand the wish to sue Youtube. I am pretty sure, however, that Youtube is not responsible for impersonation attacks and will win the lawsuit. They have too many videos to pay attention to things like this.

i do not necessarily consider the the suit. Although loads of people and projects have been upto false giveaways but i think Steven Wozniak should pay deaf ears to what comes out of people who decide not to keep their dignity and integrity by living up to their expectations. Its really not worth the stress although it will serve as a deterant.

For obvious reasons, Steve is feed up with those fake giveaways using his name and I presume that many people are asking him about this so he got stress and file this case against Youtube. This is no longer secret, they have been taken advantage of scammers thru Youtube and they need to stop this from happening. Or at least be quick on their response from reports as we have experience that it takes days and months before they finally shut down those fake giveaways.

I think he doesn't really care what others say to him personally about this but I think what he cares about is his reputation that is being tarnished because of those scammers using his name for fake giveaways. Rumors and sayings are a bad way to do it and having him not knowing what really is going on, he won't be able to prevent it as people will have their impressions on him in a bad way.

I've researched a little bit and I think he has a slim chance to win this. Though Youtube would be losing money and time too because of this.

Vitalik (founder of ETH) was so fed up at one point he did this ;D
https://cnet4.cbsistatic.com/img/Hq9V2RIUvjNySrEK_9iaoUVF5Pg=/2018/03/08/317fc9d0-bfc6-45d7-9571-88ac0d2af254/not-giving-away-eth.png

Oh, I should have explained better what I was implying.
Yeah, I wasn't really talking about youtube flagging every video in which Wozniak appears as that would trigger hundreds if not thousands of false reports, but if they did find a video for a fake giveaway and deleted it they should have already learned that certain videos with that particular scene are used for this kind of scams and put videos like that on a shortlist, whenever a scam report goes in it should have had top priority.

After all, we're talking about alphabet here, they have a lot of tracking algorithms for all their products, I'm pretty sure they have the means to discover pretty rapidly videos that are used in scams, the problem is that in their quest for $ the first and only step being done automatically is about demonetization or removing sound, the video is still on and so it begins the long wait for human intervention by an operator, which as we can see takes a long, long, time while people are getting scammed.

It's good that he is suing YouTube though but the real issue is that what will be the outcome for it?

1. He is a public figure that anyone could have access to his portrait to perpetuate such atrocities. Which means nothing

2. Does YouTube claim responsibility for all contents uploaded on its platform which I know that the only reason that they take down videos is either it outrightly failed their policy or it's reported. Now that he is suing, then he is putting them on their toes to be stricter in their policy.

It means' everything, his images are being used to perpetuate crimes with Youtube as their platforms.

Of course they should claim responsibility on everything being posted on their platform. So definitely they need to have a tougher policy about this one. If they haven't noticed, fake giveaways on their backyard are rampant and scammers and criminals are thanking them for that relax policy.

Another thing openly he's doing it through the live streaming on the YouTube. With the chat box disabled for the video itself show how they're scamming the people. Newcomers to the cryptocurrency will easy get turned to be a prey, because the way this has been happening around is simply flawless. Just send based on the requirement. Also more people keeps watching. I saw more than 5k people watching the video.

Giveaway ads on YouTube has not stopped and people are still fallen for it. This mean one thing, YouTube don't review well the ads before it is being accepted. It is a bad news for YouTube because they are being careless and make people lose money recklessly. Who would have thought ads on YouTube are published by scammers.

It seems the users are now the ones trying to make ways to keep the rest from falling victim to countless scam giveaways. This is not unique to Vitalik Buterin as far as I know. I have seen other official accounts of top crypto personalities and crypto projects giving reminders that they are not actually giving away coins.

This kind of scam is not just found on Youtube. It is everywhere online. Youtube, social media sites, Google, etc should start taking this problem very seriously now. Large amounts of money must have been stolen due to these scams. It is just right that there should be a legal action. 

Most don't bother because people still fall for them even after warning them. But those sites with verified tags are more convincing because of the trust factor.

Using the same Vitalik example above, if a hacked verified account impersonates him, no doubt at least a handful would still fall victim, even with another handle, let's say @VitaIikButerin.

Well youtube is trigger happy for copyright infractions, infamously triggering several false positives; and yet they let those (stupid) scams using the names of famous people go on unmolested. They should all band together and sue Google the way they deserve it.

I would have done the same thing if I were him. Considering the recent twitter hack and the amount people have lost it is better to report any such scams and Steve has done the right thing because it's youtube who has to figure out a way to stop people from promoting such scams which leads to huge losses to people. I am pretty impressed that Steve has taken a step at least because celebs don't generally do that.

There's been a lot of recent issues regarding scam giveaways in big popular platforms as well as using famous personalities in such activities. That's why I think YouTube also needs to step up with strict policies and take actions to prevent scam giveaways spread in their platform. They can put ads regarding these activities to warn people on YouTube if they can't stop people from doing fake giveaways.

It's understandable why Steve Wozniak wants to sue YouTube because scammers are using his name to deceive people... However, people also have their responsibility for sending money to others and believing somebody will double it for them.

Finally, someone taking a stand against youtube and their greed. Hopefully, more and more celebrities will start doing the same. In the meantime, if you are frustrated of seeing those ads you can start using brave browsers 'coz they can bypass the youtube ads.

Recently I have also seen a lot of big youtubers getting hacked and then their accounts making live streams of bitcoin giveaways and scamming people. This needs to be stopped and I have reported those streams many a times. This is making the image of cryptocurrency community bad in eyes of the world and recently one friend of mine said that the cryptocurrency people are mostly hackers after the recent news of twitter scam and now YouTube being ignorant to these scam channels and streams. But if they won't be able to stop these kind of streams then probably they will have a platform-wide ban on cryptocurrency related channels which won't be good at all.

Looks like "Woz" is in financial trouble.  ::)  None of the other celebrities who's Twitter accounts got hacked or who was used in Youtube for these scams, sued these platforms... but he does that.  ::)

You cannot blame the tool for these hacks or scams... blame the stupid/greedy people who fell for these scams.  >:(  Let's all sue the telephone companies every time a scammer picks up the telephone to scam you over the phone... see how long they would be able to  stay in business if all of us do that.  ::)

These new waves of fake giveaways are so prominent that even large companies like Youtube can't track it properly - and it just goes to show how hard policing this is. Bottom line is that these scam accusations aren't benefiting anybody, it looks bad for any parties involved.

This can eventually with better policing be better controlled but not made absolute, and this is the morale of these stories. We can do our best to prevent scams from happening but at the same time we need to understand that the risks of them happening can't be 100% eradicated.

They use bitcoin because of its trending. On Instagram, they still sometimes show those scam ads. The thing I do not understand is that its the same age-old ad. It's like a scammer pack. The scammer just sads what niche to use and then everything is the same. I have seen lottery winnings, magical investment companies that grow money on trees, buying bitcoin that magically gains you fiat, casino winnings. Basically any "excuse" as to where the winnings came from. It never makes sense so it meant to attract the type of people who would fall for it. Only someone who would fall for the ad would believe it. Anyone else can see it makes no sense.

Sometimes I get confused with Youtube why the response related to video scams is relatively slower compared to videos related
to political issues.This made me a little disappointed, because based on the articles I read on the internet. The number of video
scams victims is very large, I was very happy when Steve Wozniak decided on sues YouTube. So this can be a lesson for Youtube
for fast responds related video scams.

Even if the scams are very stupid by design or have few victims only, it is never an excuse for the admins to be indifferent and not remove or block them. Even if the accounts used for scamming are bogus or are not the official accounts of the owners obtained by the scammers through a brilliant hack, it is still not an excuse for the admins not to act against these scumbags.  

Yeah, notice that scammers shift to getting ads as well on Youtube, it's not that they are careless, it seems that they are really turning their backs and as if allowing these scammers to get into their platform to victimized many more victims. If there is another competition, I'm sure that Youtube will going to react fast and swift. But since there are none, they don't give a shit and let these criminals enjoy and have fun cashing their loot.

https://i.imgur.com/ENIfK62.png

Even doing live streams, they usually take it down, that is if it violated their ToS. But clearly with the rampant scams and ads on their backyard, it's about time that they clean up and it's really good to see that someone like Steve on sue them for not doing their part here.

And on the part of content creator, you need to be careful as well as hackers are targeting those channels that has a lot of subscribers. So learn to protect your account as well, enable 2FA, update your password with a strong one or even change a new email address for insurance.

Scammers are everywhere. Each of you should know this. Remember this when you are offered too favorable terms. When you visit a suspicious site. When your password is not secure enough.

How naive does one have to be to be deceived by such a simple way of cheating? But he did the right thing to sue. If everyone did that, the internet would be much cleaner.

Not suprised here. His name was tarnished by scammers that when you want report them its very hard or impossible.
Google in general so youtube and other services are really hard to work with with anything except using them.
You want something more? Report or contact? Virtually impossible especially second option.