Briefly
- Ripple has sued YouTube over a flood of videos in which scammers pretended to be CEOs.
- The settlement will result in the companies donating an unknown amount of money to a non-profit organization.
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, tweeted on Tuesday that he and the company have filed a lawsuit over YouTube over a flood of videos in which scammers have uploaded clips of Garlinghouse to promote various cryptocurrencies.
The phenomenon of scammers using social media to hijack the names and images of leading executives is pervasive not only in the cryptocurrency world but in the business world in general. Fraudsters have also sought to impersonate leading executives such as Elon Musk and Richard Branson on social media in order to destroy the public.
Ripple and Garlinghouse filed a lawsuit against YouTube last year, claiming that the Google-owned company blinded the issue and even took advantage of it by letting the scammers buy keywords to help them become crypto enthusiasts. target.
In a series of tweets, Garlinghouse said the settlement would lead to Ripple and YouTube working together “to prevent, detect and take down these scams.” He also noted that the company uses a forensic venture to track down stolen funds related to the scams, but adds that social media ventures need to do more, or ‘it’s just a slap in the face’.
In a telephone interview with Decipher Garlinghouse said Tuesday that the settlement would require YouTube and Ripple to fund a nonprofit fund dedicated to helping cybercrime victims.
Ripple declined to provide additional details, such as how much the companies would contribute and whether the fund would offer cash compensation. The company said it would share more information once the legal work was completed.
Garlinghouse expressed frustration over social media businesses in general and said they are very profitable and can afford to do more to police their platforms and eliminate the fraudsters. He described an incident in which he personally reported a fake Brad Garlinghouse account to Instagram, only to hear that Instagram decides that the account does not mimic him. Garlinghouse added that he also received violent threats from those who fled through crypto-scams, and believes he was involved in it.
“I’ve been in Silicon Valley for 24 years. All the major technology platforms need to take ownership not only of the good they do, but also the way they are abused,” he said. He noted that he spent a lot of resources managing bad actors when he was a senior executive at Yahoo.
Garlinghouse also said he was open to the reform of Article 230, a powerful law that protects technology companies from the behavior of their users.
The settlement in the YouTube lawsuit comes after a judge threw out an earlier version of Ripple’s lawsuit, citing section 230. In the ruling, the judge described how the scammers took over YouTube channels and charged them with fake Ripple. content, pointing out that ‘In certain ways, [YouTube] also the victim of the hijacking. ‘
Google did not respond to a request for comment on the YouTube settlement.