Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is suing YouTube and Google won, Cointelegraph reports. The lawsuit centered on the misuse of Wozniak’s photo in edited videos to promote a bitcoin scam. The Apple co-founder’s fame has been exploited to lure investors into the scam.
Apple co-founder wins lawsuit
Wozniak, along with 17 other fraud victims including Bill Gates and Elon Musk, filed the suit in 2020 after YouTube allegedly failed to remove scam videos that scammed users out of millions of dollars. The judge set aside the earlier decision of a lower court. According to the judge, YouTube does not sufficiently protect its users to remove these types of scams from its platform.
The ruling also impacts the responsibilities online platforms have in monitoring user-generated content and protecting users from scams. According to the court, it is more common for popular YouTube channels to be a place to mislead viewers.
According to Woznaik’s attorney, Joe Cotchett, the ruling makes it clear that social media platforms like “Google and YouTube take responsibility for their actions and cannot use Section 230 as a total shield for their conduct.”
Source: https://bitcoinmagazine.nl/nieuws/apple-medeoprichter-wint-grote-rechtszaak-tegen-youtube-wegens-bitcoin-scam