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Perhaps that's going down a slippery slope, and there's some happy medium between YouTube's current verification process and a maximally reliable verification process. Indeed, the very first paragraphs of Wozniak's lawsuit seek to set out a contrast between an appropriate response and an inappropriate response: On July 15, 2020, Twitter suffered a massive hack that hit 130 Twitter accounts of celebrities and public officials, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and many others. The attackers sent tweets from those accounts offering to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous bitcoin address. That same day, Twitter acted swiftly and decisively to shut down these accounts and to protect its users from the scam, issuing the above apology. In stark contrast, for years, Defendant YOUTUBE’s lax security practices have led to a steady stream of security breaches in which countless popular YouTube channels have been hijacked and taken over by criminals who use the channels to perpetuate a scam that has defrauded, and continues to defraud, YOUTUBE users of millions of dollars. Several of the Plaintiff's causes of action, such as negligence, would allow for a far more limited ruling than to be applicable any time a company accidentally miscommunicates about the identity of another person. For example, it could be negligent design that after 6 years of these scams, YouTube still allows hacked verified accounts to change their name to "MicroStrategy" or "SpaceX", without flagging or limiting usage of those identities due to the fact those names are used daily to run scam videos. Good regulation often seeks a delicate balance, striving for a happy medium that satisfies no one entirely but works well enough for everyone. |