Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak: YouTube Bitcoin Scam Victims ‘Lost Life Savings’

Apple co -founder Steve Woziniak accused YouTube of not acting against a Bitcoin The fraud that used its character, warning the same lacquered systems, now allows the Global Deepfake fraud to increase.

“Some said they lost their savings,” Wozniak said CBS News. “It’s a crime. A good person, if you see that a crime is happening, you come in and try to stop him.”

Woziniak learned that he was falsely represented in ads for fraud few years earlier and still struggling 2020 case in court against YouTube due to lack of action in the removal of content.

Apple co-founder said he discovered a fraud after his wife Janet received an email from a victim who asked when he would get his money.

The frauds “actually recorded a video of Woz talking about Bitcoin,” Janet explained. “Then they put a nice box around him with a bitcoin address and said that if you send him any amount of bitcoin, he will send you double.”

“Look at the unwanted mail, look at identity theft attempts only everywhere,” Woziniak said. “And not enough real, I don’t know, muscle to fight it.”

Deepfake fraud on the rise

Woziak’s warning comes in the middle Explosion in Ai-ratio of profoundfakes and an increase in the internet fraud. Some $ 9.3 billion was lost on internet frauds in 2024, according to reports performed at the FBI Center for appeal on Internet crime (IC3). The true total total amount is probably far higher.

Technical leaders from Elon musk to Jeff Bezos They saw their likes abducted in similar frauds, while critics say that large platforms were still slow to act. The lack of robust moderation and surveillance for internet ads, especially on social media and video platforms, has enabled the flourishing of unwanted mail, misconceptions and direct false content.

Wozniak’s criticism on YouTube echoes in British MP Liberal Democrat Max Wilkinson, who is last week invited In order to regulate the ads on the platform according to the same standards as television and worked in the UK.

“The regulations need to catch up with the reality of people watching content,” Wilkinson said, warning that “unscrupulous advertisers should not be allowed to use holes to use people.”

Google, who owns YouTube, said Decipher He removed more than 5.1 billion ads and limited another 9.1 billion in 2024, suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts for major violations and blocked ads to 1.3 billion publisher pages.

The company has announced that it has strict AD policies, invests a lot in implementation and has thousands of people working daily to policy on its platforms.

This is not the only technological company that has come criticism his capabilities of moderation of content. Similar claims are leveled on TargetX and other social media platforms.