Ripple Suing YouTube Over XRP Video Scams

Ripple and its CEO are suing YouTube over the platform allowing scams regarding the cryptocurrency. This Tuesday, CEO Brad Garlinghouse filed the lawsuit in San Francisco, reports Fortune.

Essentially, as InsideBitcoins has previously reported, scammers were impersonating Garlinghouse on the YouTube platform. At the time, this fake channel claimed that there would be a 50 million XRP airdrop. Participants were asked to send in certain amounts of XRP for a supposed extra amount.

However, this was weeks ago, and it seems Garlinghouse was waiting to see what they should do. It appears that suing was not out of the question.

Ripple and Garlinghouse are accusing YouTube of allowing these scammers to damage their brand. They’re asking that YouTube not profit off of these channels, considering they likely pay the platform to promote themselves.

“Millions of people” have seen the scam, the document states, and a single instance saw someone lose $15,000 in XRP. An excerpt reads:

The Scam has also irreparably harmed Ripple’s brand and Mr. Garlinghouse’s reputation. By infringing on Ripple’s protected trademarks and misappropriating Mr. Garlinghouse’s image and likeness, the Scam fosters the false belief that Ripple and Mr. Garlinghouse are somehow associated with or to blame for the Scam (they are not), and introduces profound uncertainty and confusion into the broader digital asset market.

Ripple claims to have asked YouTube to stop this many times. However, the video platform refuses to comply, “even where the same scheme is replicated time and again.”

The complaint then goes after YouTube’s “robust tools” for content regulation. They claim to have fantastic tools available, but nothing is done about these scams.

YouTube and crypto often butt heads. After all, cryptocurrency/blockchain accounts have been taken down on the platform left and right, seemingly for no reason. Tone Vays, for instance, was recently taken down, as InsideBitcoins has previously reported on.