Autocrats and social media takedown brokers are destroying independent media through fake copyright complaints

Autocrats and social media takedown brokers are destroying independent media through fake copyright complaints

Hired hands in an underground takedown market are charging up to $5,000 to scrub reporting from social media by filing fake copyright claims.

Independent media often face off against autocratic governments in countries like Georgia. But last week, OCCRP member center Monitori was forced to contact a tech giant to fend off a censorship attempt: YouTube.

When Monitori’s YouTube channel suddenly disappeared, the outlet received an emailed explanation. It had been taken down due to claims of copyright infringement against three videos.

One video featured a collection of luxury Hermès handbags belonging to the wife of a politician. Another video focused on sanctioned judges, while the third detailed cigarette excise tax changes that benefited a government-linked businessman.

Claiming copyright infringement is an increasingly common tactic to silence journalists and civil society, according to Alberto Fittarelli, a senior researcher specializing in disinformation at Toronto-based Citizen Lab. It’s especially hard to fight since the burden of proof is on the victims to challenge accusations of copyright infringement.

“The abuse of copyright infringement reporting channels is particularly effective,” said Fittarelli. “Because it is virtually invisible to the platforms’ (unaffected) users, unlike for example bots’ comments or posts, it remains incredibly underestimated.”

In notification emails sent to Monitori, YouTube stated that the complaints originated from three accounts, including one named Ripu Singh. He had claimed the Monitori “videos copied and reused my thumbnail design and images without permission.” 

YouTube’s notification listed an email address for the complainant, so a reporter sent a message posing as a potential client wanting to take down videos posted by a media outlet. 

The reporter received a response almost immediately: “So you want to terminate a channel, can you drop the link to that, so we tell you the price?” 

He then provided a WhatsApp number listed in an online phone directory under the name Aditya Singh. In chats with the reporters, Singh revealed more details about how the opaque industry of paid copyright claim abusers works.

He said he did not know who ultimately commissioned the Monitori takedown, as the client had gone through another “vendor” who contacted him. He said he was working from India, and that his “agency” charges between $3,000 and $5,000 for the service. He said his services are not advertised, but clients find him through referrals.

“I terminated this channel,” he confirmed to Monitori.

When the reporter revealed who she was, and asked for him to withdraw his complaints to YouTube, he offered to do it for $380 per video. He did not confirm or deny that his real name is Aditya Singh, and did not divulge further information about who he works with or who had hired him. 

YouTube did not respond to a request for comment, but it did restore Monitori’s channel. 

Just days after YouTube removed the channel, Facebook took down Monitori’s page following a bogus copyright claim. Reporters could not establish the claimant’s real identity, as neither the name nor the email address provided in the complaint yielded results in public records. Facebook restored the page after Monitori contested the takedown.

Other media have also been targets of fake copyright claims.

Radio Azattyq, the Kazakh service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has had its Instagram page removed over the past six months. Radio Azattyq also received warnings from YouTube and Facebook that those accounts had been targeted as well, although the pages were not taken down.

Among the flagged reports were stories on a Kazakh presidential decree regarding parliamentary elections, the conviction of a political activist, and an investigation into a lucrative company allegedly linked to political elites.

Via his TikTok account, reporters discovered that the user claiming copyright on the presidential decree post was a Pakistan-based gamer. Radio Azattyq eventually managed to restore the Instagram page after filing complaints.

Such attacks on journalists and activists represent a “global threat to civil society,” said Fittarelli. While some platforms explicitly state that they prohibit misuse of their reporting systems, “it is unclear how actively that is enforced,” he added.

“With review systems geared towards accepting a claim based on superficial evidence, it is almost trivial for bad actors to set up and backdate websites so as to claim ownership of a certain content, and to throw the burden of evidence on their victims,” said Fittarelli.