Meta’s Copyright System Is Being Weaponized Against Albanian Protesters
Meta’s Copyright System Is Being Weaponized Against Albanian Protesters
Meta 的版权系统正被武器化以针对阿尔巴尼亚抗议者
European lawmakers are calling for an investigation into Meta after the mass suspension of accounts posting about anti-government protests in Albania, in what observers believe is a coordinated brigading attack. 在阿尔巴尼亚发布有关反政府抗议活动的账户遭到大规模封禁后，欧洲议员们呼吁对 Meta 进行调查。观察人士认为，这是一场有组织的“围攻”（brigading）攻击。
“What happened in Albania is tantamount to censorship,” said MEP Alexandra Geese in a statement. She is one of more than 30 Members of the European Parliament who signed a letter asking the European Commission to investigate whether Meta’s actions complied with the EU’s Digital Services Act. 欧洲议会议员 Alexandra Geese 在一份声明中表示：“发生在阿尔巴尼亚的事情等同于审查。”她是签署联名信要求欧盟委员会调查 Meta 的行为是否符合欧盟《数字服务法案》（Digital Services Act）的 30 多名欧洲议会议员之一。
“Mark Zuckerberg’s understanding of ‘freedom of speech’ only seems to cover opinions that align with the political agenda of the Trump administration. This is precisely why we have European rules,” she added. 她补充道：“马克·扎克伯格对‘言论自由’的理解似乎只涵盖那些符合特朗普政府政治议程的观点。这正是我们需要欧洲规则的原因。”
The “Flamingo Revolution” protests, initially sparked by the development of a luxury resort linked to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, have been taking place daily in the Albanian capital for over three months, demanding changes in the law that allows development on protected land as well as the resignation of the country’s prime minister. The Meta account suspensions almost all appear to be the result of copyright complaints and appear to have begun in late August. “火烈鸟革命”（Flamingo Revolution）抗议活动最初是由一个与伊万卡·特朗普和贾里德·库什纳有关的豪华度假村开发项目引发的。抗议活动已在阿尔巴尼亚首都持续了三个多月，每天都在进行，要求修改允许在保护区进行开发的法律，并要求该国总理辞职。Meta 的账户封禁似乎几乎都是版权投诉的结果，且始于 8 月下旬。
An NGO group investigating the Meta suspensions alleges to WIRED it has evidence that “strongly indicates coordinated activity” led to the complaints. 一个调查 Meta 封禁事件的非政府组织向《连线》（WIRED）杂志声称，他们掌握的证据“强烈表明有组织的活动”导致了这些投诉。
“What quickly distinguished this from ordinary content moderation was the concentration of cases around the same political and civic movement,” said Martha Dimitratou, founder of Repro Uncensored, a nonprofit organization that tracks digital censorship. In at least one case, the complaint was traced to someone who claimed they had been paid to make the complaint. 追踪数字审查的非营利组织 Repro Uncensored 的创始人 Martha Dimitratou 表示：“这与普通内容审核的快速区别在于，案件集中在同一个政治和公民运动周围。”在至少一个案例中，投诉被追溯到一名声称自己收钱进行投诉的人。
Dimitratou told WIRED they had verified around 100 cases of account restrictions connected to protests. “We continue to receive additional reports and, based on the volume and patterns we are seeing, estimate that the true number could be several hundred,” she says. Dimitratou 告诉《连线》，他们已经核实了约 100 起与抗议活动相关的账户限制案例。她说：“我们不断收到额外的报告，根据我们看到的数量和模式，估计真实数字可能达到数百个。”
“We also identified that multiple posts on an account would receive copyright complaints, often five to 10 in a relatively short period, followed by escalating enforcement and, in some cases, the disabling of the entire account,” Dimitratou says. “Taken together, the alleged paid reporting, the repeated sequence of copyright complaints followed by account enforcement, the concentration of targets around the same movement, and the repeated targeting of replacement accounts strongly indicate coordinated activity,” Dimitratou added. Dimitratou 说：“我们还发现，一个账户上的多条帖子会收到版权投诉，通常在相对较短的时间内收到 5 到 10 条，随后是升级的执法行动，在某些情况下，整个账户会被禁用。”她补充道：“综合来看，所谓的付费举报、版权投诉后紧随账户执法的重复序列、针对同一运动的目标集中度，以及对替代账户的反复针对，都强烈表明这是有组织的活动。”
Repro Uncensored found that nearly all affected accounts appeared to be targeted with reports of copyright infringement. In at least 70 cases, the group confirmed removal of posts and videos about the protests, account restrictions, and loss of collaboration features. Repro Uncensored 发现，几乎所有受影响的账户似乎都是版权侵权举报的目标。该组织确认，在至少 70 起案例中，有关抗议活动的帖子和视频被删除，账户受到限制，并失去了协作功能。
“Collectively, the targeted accounts reach millions of people, meaning that when they are restricted or removed, millions can lose access to news, political information, protest documentation, and civic voices they rely on,” Dimitratou says. Dimitratou 说：“这些被针对的账户总共覆盖了数百万人，这意味着当它们被限制或移除时，数百万人可能会失去获取他们所依赖的新闻、政治信息、抗议记录和公民声音的渠道。”
One protester told WIRED that the person reporting his account said they had been paid to conduct the attack. On August 20, Arjan Koçi began receiving an influx of emails from Meta. “Someone was claiming that I had taken their work and published it as mine. But it was my video, my voice, my picture,” says Koçi, a British-Albanian who had been documenting the protest on his Instagram account since June. 一名抗议者告诉《连线》，举报他账户的人称他们收钱进行了这次攻击。8 月 20 日，Arjan Koçi 开始收到大量来自 Meta 的邮件。自 6 月以来一直在 Instagram 账户上记录抗议活动的英籍阿尔巴尼亚人 Koçi 说：“有人声称我拿了他们的作品并作为我自己的发布。但那明明是我的视频、我的声音、我的照片。”
Koçi’s aerial drone footage showed the massive scale of the demonstrations in Tirana and got millions of views across platforms. “If you receive too many of these reports, Meta will restrict your account,” he told WIRED. Around the same time, he said, several other protesters were also facing similar reports against their accounts. “It was about 1 o’clock in the morning, and I know at least 20 accounts that were closed at the same time,” he said. Koçi 的无人机航拍画面展示了地拉那示威活动的巨大规模，并在各大平台上获得了数百万次观看。他告诉《连线》：“如果你收到太多此类举报，Meta 就会限制你的账户。”他说，大约在同一时间，其他几名抗议者也面临类似的账户举报。“当时大约是凌晨 1 点，我知道至少有 20 个账户在同一时间被关闭，”他说。
“This tactic of mass copyright reporting, commonly called brigading, is an abuse of the systems that Meta has in place for people to report genuinely problematic, abusive, dangerous, or illegal content on their platforms,” said Kian Vesteinsson, deputy director for tech policy and digital rights research at Freedom House. “We’ve even seen this sort of brigading happen at scale in the context of a war or a conflict. Certainly, it’s a tactic that we saw carried out by the Myanmar military, for example, to go after people criticizing the government’s conduct,” he told WIRED. 自由之家（Freedom House）技术政策和数字权利研究副主任 Kian Vesteinsson 表示：“这种大规模版权举报的策略，通常被称为‘围攻’，是对 Meta 为人们举报平台上真正有问题、辱骂性、危险或非法内容而设立的系统的滥用。”他告诉《连线》：“我们甚至在战争或冲突背景下看到过这种大规模的围攻。当然，这是我们看到缅甸军方使用过的一种策略，例如，用来对付批评政府行为的人。”
Five of the reports made against Koçi’s content came from the same source with the same email address. He decided to reach out to the complainant. “I told him, ‘You have made a mistake; you are claiming my work as yours. Why are you doing this?’” 针对 Koçi 内容的五份举报来自同一个来源，且使用同一个电子邮件地址。他决定联系举报人。“我告诉他，‘你弄错了；你声称我的作品是你的。你为什么要这样做？’”
To his surprise, Koçi received a response. “He asked for my contact and then texted me.” The person told Koçi that he had been paid $1,800 to report these accounts and would withdraw his complaints if Koçi paid him. “He said he would accept crypto as payment.” 令他惊讶的是，Koçi 收到了回复。“他要了我的联系方式，然后给我发了短信。”此人告诉 Koçi，他收到了 1800 美元的报酬来举报这些账户，如果 Koçi 付钱给他，他就会撤回投诉。“他说他接受加密货币作为付款。”
When Koçi refused, the person shared a piece of advice: “If you want to keep your account safe, deactivate it for a week.” Further attempts to contact the alleged attacker were met with silence. They did not respond to WIRED’s attempts to contact them. 当 Koçi 拒绝后，此人给出了一个建议：“如果你想保住你的账户，就停用它一周。”随后试图联系这名涉嫌攻击者均未得到回应。他们也没有回应《连线》的联系请求。
“Our research has found that copyright claims can trigger enforcement more readily than many other forms of reporting,” said Dimitratou, adding that often multiple complaints are deliberately directed at the same account, making them vulnerable to automated suspensions. Dimitratou 说：“我们的研究发现，版权主张比许多其他形式的举报更容易触发执法行动。”她补充说，通常多项投诉会被蓄意针对同一个账户，使其容易受到自动封禁的影响。
“The fundamental vulnerability is that a bad actor does not need to hack an account or directly prevent someone from publishing. They can weaponize the platform’s own enforcement infrastructure by falsely claiming ownership of material and repeatedly reporting,” Dimitratou said. Dimitratou 说：“根本的脆弱性在于，恶意行为者不需要黑入账户或直接阻止某人发布内容。他们可以通过虚假声称拥有材料所有权并反复举报，来将平台自身的执法基础设施武器化。”
Vesteinsson told WIRED there was an additional vulnerability, in that “US-based platforms follow US copyright law. And specifically, the copyright framework set out under the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And th Vesteinsson 告诉《连线》，还存在另一个脆弱性，即“总部位于美国的平台遵循美国版权法。特别是《数字千年版权法》（DMCA）所规定的版权框架。而……”