The ever evolving world of cryptocurrency witnessed another major development involving three biggies of their own sectors. The latest ruling by the California appeals court made way for Apple co-founder’s claims against YouTube over allowing Bitcoin linked scams on its platform.
Big trouble for YouTube?
According to reports, the appeals court saw a small opening in the immunity provided by the federal Communications Decency Act. This allowed Steve Wozniak, the co founder of Apple and user who got scammed to move ahead with a portion of their claims against YouTube. However, this also includes the online video sharing platform’s parent company, Google.
Any move taken by Wozniak and scammed users will challenge the broad protections granted to internet platform companies. While the lawsuit was initially dismissed by the trial court citing Section 230 immunity.
Apple co founder had alleged that scammers hijacked his YouTube channel and conducted a crypto giveaway scam. This resulted in users losing a good amount of money. Somehow, he claims that the video sharing platform already knew about these scams running on the platform but it failed to stop them.
A report mentioned that the crucial lawsuit includes claims like misappropriation of likeness, fraud, misrepresentation, unfair business practices, negligence, and negligent failure to warn. It is being further claimed that YouTube’s inactions added to these running scams that have already resulted in financial harm for the users.
Increase in crypto scams
Reports suggest that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives internet platforms immunity from liability for user-created content. But, the court’s ruling gave out a message that claims like videos related to YouTube’s alleged knowledge of scams and failure to prevent them, may fall outside the scope.
It has become common to see crypto linked scams or live feeds with misleading titles running over YouTube. An such incident occurred when Ripple’s XRP linked deep fake videos were surfacing on the platform.
However, these types of scams hit a surge on social media platforms when the crypto market is booming. Bitcoin recently went on to record its new all time high (ATH) of above $73,500, signaling bullish sentiment in the market.
The recent crypto market surge led to an increase in the fear and greed index hitting as high as 89 points. Since then BTC price has been on a decline, dropping by 12% in the last 7 days.
