Steve Wozniak Sues YouTube Over Twitter-Like Bitcoin Scam

[Yaunfitda]

Steve Wozniak Sues YouTube Over Twitter-Like Bitcoin Scam

Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak says YouTube has for months allowed scammers to use his name and likeness as part of a phony bitcoin giveaway similar to the one that was quickly extinguished by Twitter Inc. last week.

Scammers used images and video of Wozniak, who left Apple in 1985, to convince YouTube users that he was hosting a live giveaway and anyone who sent him bitcoins will get double the number back, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in state court in San Mateo County, California. “But when users transfer their cryptocurrency, in an irreversible transaction, they receive nothing back.”

The scam also uses the names and images of other tech celebrities, including Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, according to the suit.

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.

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[Wenbing]

Steve Wozniak Sues YouTube Over Twitter-Like Bitcoin Scam

Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak says YouTube has for months allowed scammers to use his name and likeness as part of a phony bitcoin giveaway similar to the one that was quickly extinguished by Twitter Inc. last week.

Scammers used images and video of Wozniak, who left Apple in 1985, to convince YouTube users that he was hosting a live giveaway and anyone who sent him bitcoins will get double the number back, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in state court in San Mateo County, California. “But when users transfer their cryptocurrency, in an irreversible transaction, they receive nothing back.”

The scam also uses the names and images of other tech celebrities, including Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, according to the suit.

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.

[DoubleEdgeEX]

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.

[stompix]

I wonder if Elon Musk and Co will try to sue Twitter over the previous hacks too.

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:

YouTube has been “unresponsive” to Wozniak’s repeated requests to take down the fraudulent videos, he said.

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

[7788bitcoin]

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.

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.

[nicecrypto]

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.

[Oyarebu]

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.

[Baofeng]

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.

[batang_bitcoin]

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.

[20kevin20]

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.

[Kemarit]

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.

[kezinaur14]

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

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

[hatshepsut93]

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

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.

[Wexnident]

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.

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.

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.

[meanwords]

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

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.

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.

[Darker45]

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. 

[Bitstar_coin]

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.

[TravelMug]

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

[pooya87]

This is a bad news for both YouTube and bitcoin.

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!

[Tipstar]

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.