Major Blockchain firm Ripple has sued YouTube on Tuesday charging that it has failed to protect the users against the fake XRP giveaway scams on its platform.

Ripple alleged that through the fake profiles on Youtube, impersonating Ripple Labs and its CEO Brad Garlinghouse, the scammers duped the victims by baiting them to send thousands of dollars’ worth of Ripple currency – XRP, has slandered the reputation of Ripple and it’s CEO.

In the giveaway scam, the scammers deceived the customers by promising them to send back 5 million XRP worth of around $1 million which were obviously not sent back.  

The filing at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, states that Youtube’s failure to address the “pervasive and injurious fraud” has damaged the reputations of both Ripple and Garlinghouse.  

As per Ripple, the YouTube proliferated the scam by selling ads to the scammers on the videos and even awarded a verification badge to the hacked channel with Garlinghouse’s image as a profile picture which persuaded the users that the account was legitimate.

A blog post on the Ripple website stated, “For every scam, giveaway, fake conspiracy that is taken down, multiple more pop up nearly immediately. YouTube and other big technology and social media platforms must be held accountable for not implementing sufficient processes for fighting these scams.”

The lawsuit has raised a fresh challenge for the controversial Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act which safeguards social media companies such as Facebook and internet companies such as Google from the liability for the content posted on their respective platforms.  

CEO Garlinghouse said that similar activities have been observed on Facebook’s other app Instagram but they have sued only YouTube for its slow response and less agility to take action against these crimes.

YouTube spokesperson Alex Joseph, however, defended the charges saying that the company takes abuses seriously and acts quickly whenever violations of policies such as scams or impersonations are detected.

Ripple Labs 

San Francisco based Ripple labs is a major blockchain company in the US founded in 2012 by Chris Larson and Jed McCaleb. The digital asset XRP developed by Ripple for payments is among the top cryptocurrencies.

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Jayashree Ingle

CBW - External Analyst

INDIA