Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced on Tuesday that he and Ripple are taking legal action against YouTube as the video content platform consistently failed to tackle fake giveaway scams and impersonators. Applauding the move, WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty has come in support of Garlinghouse, highlighting that the social media companies completely ignore user safety. He tweeted on Wednesday that these companies are fine with harassment as it brings more engagement, citing the example of Twitter’s hidden reply.
100% agree wirh @bgarlinghouse
Thank you for picking up the cause!
Social media companies completely ignore user safety. They’re even ok with harassment as it increases “engagement” on their platform.
Twitter hidden reply is an example:
Hiding reply makes it more visible ?????>? https://t.co/QjOzgHBZrT
— Nischal (WazirX) ?? (@NischalShetty) April 22, 2020
Taking Facebook as an example, Shetty stated that every time they post something new on Facebook, a fake page is created with their name and logo. He added that Facebook can easily detect this, but they obviously don’t want to. These fake pages also comment on the original post luring users to participate in fake giveaways.
Let’s take @Facebook as an example:
Every time we create a new post, there’s a new fake FB page created with same WazirX logo and name (very easy for fb to detect but they obviously don’t want to)
This fake page then leaves a comment under our post with a fake giveaway https://t.co/pZyndlkC6e
— Nischal (WazirX) ?? (@NischalShetty) April 22, 2020
Highlighting the privacy limitation of Telegram, Shetty tweeted:
Let’s take @telegram as an example
Scammers scrape the entire public group user list and message them into thinking its an official from our company. @telegram can simply bring a feature to hide group member list.
But again, this will reduce engagement so they prefer not to https://t.co/C7O6zYZogV
— Nischal (WazirX) ?? (@NischalShetty) April 22, 2020
While criticizing the social media platforms, the WazirX co-founder also took a sharp dig at WhatsApp, that if a person adds a user to a group, his/her number gets visible to everyone else, which isn’t good for user privacy.
Let’s take @WhatsApp as an example
People add you to groups and your phone number is visible to everyone else!
So much for user protection. https://t.co/liK9OXGism
— Nischal (WazirX) ?? (@NischalShetty) April 22, 2020
Nischal’s stand is extremely vital for the Indian crypto industry, as the last thing it needs is users complaining of getting scammed by fake crypto giveaways. The credibility of the crypto space is still quite fragile, especially since regulators like the Reserve Bank of India are still quite apprehensive about it. Any kind of crypto scams coming to fore can easily jeopardize the legitimacy of the industry.
