After almost four years, Jort Kelder has been vindicated by the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam. The court ruled Tuesday that Google did too little to keep out rogue advertisements in which the image of the TV presenter was used. The size of the damages will be determined in separate proceedings. Various media are writing about the ruling, including NOS and de Volkskrant.
For the beginning of this case, we have to go back to 2020. Back then, fake advertisements about investment opportunities in bitcoin and other crypto currencies were circulating on the Internet. To appear reliable and legitimate, the advertisers used profile photos of Dutch celebrities, including Jort Kelder. This was done without explicit permission from the BN'ers, who were not pleased.
Kelder then decided to hold Google and Twitter liable for displaying the fake ads. The companies were said to be doing too little against this form of deception. The Amsterdam court disagreed. Instead of suing the Internet platforms, prosecutors should target the advertisers behind the fake ads and fake tweets.
"Google and Twitter, as Internet platforms, are not automatically liable for the content of ads placed by an advertiser. To assume liability on the part of Google and Twitter, the companies themselves must be culpable. The court finds that this is not the case in this instance," the judge wrote in the ruling.
Kelder and his lawyers disagreed with this ruling and appealed. "Google has demonstrably shown ads with my image 2,500 times. I think Google cannot hide behind anonymous addresses, causing small investors to suffer damages," the TV presenter said. His lawyers stressed that Google and Twitter do have their own responsibility when it comes to showing fake ads.
We are now almost four years on and the Amsterdam Court of Appeal has delivered its verdict. The court stated that Kelder had pointed out to Google that the ads circulating from him on the Internet were not pure coffee. According to the court, the search engine giant should have set up its monitoring systems to block new ads that were virtually identical to the earlier ads reported. Because Google failed to do so, Kelder suffered damages.
The amount of damages to which the TV presenter is entitled will be determined in a separate proceeding. When this will take place is unknown.
Kelder is pleased with the Amsterdam court's ruling. "Finally, after almost four years of struggle we get something of satisfaction. It has always amazed me how Google, one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world, could get away with this. I wanted to draw a line, not only on behalf of all the abused famous people, but certainly also for the victims who have been duped into all those millions of fake advertisements and sometimes lost all their savings," the TV personality reveals in a press release about the verdict.
Google said in a response that the safety of its users is paramount and that the company will study the ruling. "The court recognizes our intensive fight against ad fraud. In 2022 alone, we stopped more than 5.2 billion misleading ads," a Google spokeswoman said.
