By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 18th, 2024
Garlinghouse announced that Ripple and Youtube have settled and would be working hand in hand “to prevent, detect and take down these scams”.
Ripple has been able to successfully see the end of one of the many lawsuits it is in as its CEO Brad Garlinghouse has announced that the crypto company has settled its case with YouTube. The San Francisco-based company had filed a lawsuit against the video-sharing platform over allowing scammers to upload clips of Garlinghouse to promote various crypto scams.
Social platforms are starting to acknowledge their role in allowing crypto scams to persist and recognize the need to be part of the solution. Some like @xrpforensics are helping detect/track stolen funds, but platforms need to lead the charge or it’s still just whack-a-mole. 2/3
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) March 9, 2021
While this trend is not entirely new in the crypto space, it is a common phenomenon generally as we have seen impostors try to impersonate high profile members of society like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, etc in their bid to scam unsuspecting members of the public.
According to the lawsuit, Garlinghouse and Ripple alleged that YouTube profited through such schemes by deliberately neglecting the issue and also selling the crypto scammers keywords that could help them in reaching their target audience better. As such, Ripple accused YouTube of “failing to enforce its own policies” because it allowed these scams to take place on its platform.
Garlinghouse announced through Twitter that the firms have settled and would be working hand in hand “to prevent, detect and take down these scams” before adding that works are already ongoing to track funds that might have been stolen through these scams. He highlighted the need for social media sites to do more in protecting their platforms from impostors who soil the identity of whoever they are impersonating.
The Ripple CEO also mentioned that he has received several threats from victims of the fraud who believed he was a party to the scam. In order to mitigate against future recurrence of such events, YouTube and Ripple would be funding a non-profit that would be geared towards helping victims of cybercrime. Both companies have refused to provide details of what they would be contributing to the fund saying that “more information would be provided once the legal work is finalized.”