{"id":1333,"date":"2018-07-09T14:16:50","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T18:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silvermillerlaw.com\/?p=1333"},"modified":"2023-06-09T12:13:19","modified_gmt":"2023-06-09T12:13:19","slug":"youtube-accused-negligence-bitconnect-fraud-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"news_posts","link":"https:\/\/www.silvermillerlaw.com\/press\/in-the-news\/youtube-accused-negligence-bitconnect-fraud-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTube Accused of Negligence in BitConnect Fraud Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"
Digital media giant YouTube has been named in class action lawsuit tied to the collapse of BitConnect, the cryptocurrency lending platform widely accused of fraud.<\/p>\n
BitConnect’s shutdown in January \u2013 which followed a series of warnings from U.S. investors \u2013 triggered a number of investor lawsuits, including one filed\u00a0in late January<\/a>\u00a0in Florida. BitConnect’s platform was tied to a token and in-house crypto exchange, both of which have gone defunct in the months since (once valued above $400, the token is now worth less than $0.50 apiece according to\u00a0CoinMarketCap<\/a>).<\/p>\n That lawsuit later became a consolidated class-action following a court ruling in June, coming in the wake of claims of\u00a0an ongoing inquiry<\/a>\u00a0by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.<\/p>\n The lawsuit faults YouTube for negligence in not policing the content on its site \u2013 particularly promotional videos by BitConnect boosters and affiliates \u2013 more tightly. The plaintiffs wrote that, all told, the top 10 most popular BitConnect affiliates\u00a0“published over 70,000 hours of unedited content, generating 58,000,000 views and luring hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of victims.”<\/p>\n They went on to state:<\/p>\n \n“By enacting policies designed to prevent bad actors (such as those soliciting investments in fraudulent Ponzi schemes) from disseminating harmful, offensive or inappropriate content through its platform, YOUTUBE owed, by its own assumption, Plaintiffs and the Class a duty to reasonable care to prevent such content from harming its users.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n YouTube, according to the lawsuit, “failed as a gatekeeper to protect its users.”<\/p>\n