Tekendra Parmar of Bloomberg reports that scammers are using Meta’s copyright tools to scam their users. Victims’ content is being removed from Instagram unless they pay steep ransoms. Parmar writes:
In May 2023, Esaa Ahmed-Adnan, an Iraqi social media influencer who’s amassed more than 500,000 followers on Instagram with his videos about environmental issues, received a curious message from the platform. A sponsored post for a local restaurant he’d made had been taken down after being flagged for a copyright violation. Ahmed-Adnan, who knew to avoid doing things likely to inspire trouble, such as adding copyrighted music to his posts, was confused. This particular video consisted entirely of him touring the restaurant and trying various dishes.
Not long after, other videos started disappearing: A post he made promoting an area volunteer effort to clean up the Tigris River, which flows through Baghdad, was also flagged for a copyright violation. That video showed him talking directly to the camera while helping to pick up trash from the banks of the river and, again, featured no copyrighted music.
Via WhatsApp, Ahmed-Adnan got in touch with the person who flagged his posts, who claimed to be the owner of an intellectual-property protection business. He acknowledged that Ahmed-Adnan’s post wasn’t actually violating anyone’s copyright and suggested he could restore the content for $3,000, about as much as Ahmed-Adnan makes in a month.[…]
The Meta spokesperson said the company is selective about whom it approves for Rights Manager, to “ensure that only legitimate rights holders have access to this tool.” But a black market has emerged and made it easier for the tool to fall into the wrong hands. On multiple Facebook groups, some open to the public, users sell Instagram and Facebook accounts with access to Rights Manager for as much as $3,000. These are often accounts that had secured legitimate access and were subsequently hacked. Active users on various groups are located around the world but mostly in developing countries where scammers are less likely to catch Meta’s attention. The administrators of the largest group, which has 1,000 members, live in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Dubai, according to their user profiles. […]
Tech4Peace was able to help Ahmed-Adnan get his content restored within a few days of his contacting the group, which he says he did after receiving only an automated reply from Meta saying it couldn’t help. But a few weeks later he received new takedown notifications and would eventually lose about $20,000 in advertising revenue because of the attacks, by his estimate. Ahmed-Adnan’s attacker seemed to revel in his dilemma. “You’re being foolish,” the person said in a message reviewed by Businessweek. “If you don’t pay within 24 hours, we’ll take out your account.” When he refused, the person taunted him. “Say goodbye to your video on Facebook. Say goodbye to it. One or two more videos and your Facebook page is gone.”
Read more here.
