Steve Wozniak Reveals YouTube Bitcoin Scam Horror: Victims Drained of Life Savings
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak drops a bombshell—YouTube’s latest Bitcoin scam wave has left investors financially wrecked.
Crypto carnage hits Main Street
Fraudsters hijacked YouTube’s platform to push fake Bitcoin giveaways, leveraging Wozniak’s reputation without consent. The result? Ordinary folks—many nearing retirement—got swindled out of everything.
The $0 recovery reality
Despite high-profile victims coming forward, law enforcement struggles to trace the decentralized theft. ‘It’s like trying to arrest smoke,’ admits one investigator.
Platforms profit, users pay
While social media giants collect ad revenue, their ‘self-regulation’ efforts remain as effective as a screen door on a submarine. Just another day in the wild west of digital finance—where the house always wins, even when it’s not playing.
Deepfake fraud on the rise
Wozniak’s warning comes amid an explosion in AI-generated deepfakes and increasing online fraud. Some $9.3 billion was lost to online scams in 2024, according to reports made to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). The real total is likely far higher.
Tech leaders from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos have seen their likenesses hijacked in similar scams, while critics say major platforms remain slow to act. A lack of robust moderation and oversight for online ads, especially on social media and video platforms, has allowed spammy, misleading, and outright fraudulent content to flourish.
Wozniak's criticism of YouTube echoes that of UK Liberal Democrat MP Max Wilkinson, who last week called for ads on the platform to be regulated to the same standards as television and radio in the UK.
“Regulations need to catch up with the reality of how people are watching content,” Wilkinson said, warning that “unscrupulous advertisers must not be allowed to use loopholes to exploit people.”
Google, which owns YouTube, told Decrypt it removed over 5.1 billion ads and restricted another 9.1 billion in 2024, suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts for major violations, and blocked ads on 1.3 billion publisher pages.
The company said it has strict ad policies, invests heavily in enforcement, and has thousands of people working around the clock to police its platforms.
It's not the only tech company that has come in for criticism of its content moderation abilities. Similar claims have been leveled at Meta, X and other social media platforms.
