On April 21, Ripple (XRP) filed a lawsuit against YouTube for the many XRP giveaway scams on the video platform. In a blog post titled “Enough is Enough: It’s time to protect the community”, the company made known its strong intentions to “protect consumers around the world from dangerous online giveaway scams and false impersonations across YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and more.”
Ripple Labs and CEO Brad Garlinghouse have been named as plaintiffs in the case, and the lawsuit describes the effects of the lawsuit as follows,
YouTube’s deliberate inaction has irreparably harmed — and continues to irreparably harm — Ripple’s brand and Mr. Garlinghouse’s reputation. YouTube’s inaction has also injured countless individuals who fell victim to the Scam. These harms will continue to grow in scope and severity absent intervention by the Court.
The earth-shattering move to file a lawsuit against YouTube is in part also a desire “to prompt an industry wide-behavior change and set the expectation of accountability.” The world of cryptocurrency continues to see numerous scams target uninformed individuals. Only as recently as yesterday was it reported that a Chinese wallet, EOS Ecosystem, had shut down, and taking $52 million worth of users funds with it.
Similarly, the XRP token has been used by several disingenuous parties in an attempt to phish users and obtain sensitive data. Giveaway scams involve these parties impersonating official employees of a project or company, telling users that they will receive more funds if they send funds. Unfortunately, several individuals continue to fall for this scam. Ripple has also published a how to spot an XRP giveaway scam guide.
The blog post calls for a few measures to be taken by YouTube. It primarily asks for a more aggressive and proactive approach in dealing with scams, but also demands that these scams be removed more quickly and that no one profits from these scams.
Ripple itself is pouring more resources to tackle the problem, hiring an external cybersecurity and digital threat intelligence vendor.
Garlinghouse elaborated on the matter on Twitter, saying that “YouTube’s inertia is indicative of an industry-wide problem of a lack of accountability.”
