On Sunday, November 14th, Atheist Republic's Twitter (@AtheistRepublic) was incorrectly suspended from the platform due to multiple false copyright claims. Twitter's copyright reporting system was exploited, and as a result, the largest atheist-centered account has been removed from the platform.
Atheist Republic's Twitter account began getting hit with provably false copyright claims in late August 2021, and the frequency of these false claims began accelerating through November. These false claims followed the same pattern. All of the false claims against us originated in Bangladesh. Each copyright strike featured memes as the "infringed" upon material. Each claim simply displayed the meme on the claimant's own website. Posting an image on one's own website is not satisfactory proof of being the lawfully recognized copyright holder. Many of the claims against the Atheist Republic account were repeatedly issued by the same individuals. One of these individuals even posted one of Atheist Republic's own fan signs to their website, likely intended to claim that they are the copyright holder of this image in the future.
Atheist Republic has filed DMCA counter-notifications in response to all seven of these false copyright claims. Several pieces of content taken down due to claimed copyright infringement were reinstated after Twitter determined that the copyright claim was incorrect. The copyright claim system was exploited due to the period of review for counter-notifications taking much longer than the process to make a claim against an account. This allowed the false claimers to hit the Atheist Republic account with claims more quickly than they could be reviewed.
This is clearly an abuse of Twitter's copyright claim system and must be corrected. This incident highlights the importance of having personal contacts at large social media companies, as there is little hope of remedying issues otherwise. If you or anyone you know has connections to Twitter, please reach out to Atheist Republic's CEO at Susanna@AtheistRepublic.com.
