Silencing Journalists Online: How Copyright Is Being Weaponized Against Investigative Journalists

By Global Investigative Journalism Network

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A new form of censorship is emerging globally to silence the work of journalists and activists. On digital platforms like Facebook or Google, journalists’ social media accounts and their stories are being targeted with fake complaints aimed at silencing their work online. The perpetrators are often shady firms hired by powerful interests who offer to remove content their clients don’t like online by playing with digital platforms rules. Reputation cleaning firms or individuals make up false claims of copyright infringement and pressure the digital platforms to take down targeted contents. Do they succeed? Often, they do. And Big Tech companies sometimes even refuse to disclose information on who makes these complaints. The mechanics are straightforward and hard to fight: scammers duplicate the journalists’ social media accounts or content and file fake copyright infringement claims to digital platforms, accusing the journalists of impersonating them thus violating the platforms’ ru

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