Meta has quietly launched what can only be described as a hostage-taking simulator for the modern age. Scammers have discovered that filing fake copyright claims against Instagram accounts is the digital equivalent of tying someone to a chair and demanding bitcoin, except Meta does most of the heavy lifting.
Here’s how the racket works: A criminal files a bogus copyright strike. Meta’s automated system, which appears to have been trained by a sleep-deprived intern with a dartboard, immediately throttles the account. The account owner then receives a message that their livelihood is now frozen unless they pay the scammer directly to withdraw the claim. It’s protection money, but the protection is from Meta itself.
The beauty of this scheme, from a criminal perspective, is that Meta’s dispute process moves at the speed of continental drift. By the time a legitimate creator can prove the claim is fake, they’ve already lost weeks of income, audience momentum, and the will to live. Scammers, meanwhile, have discovered they can run an entire extortion operation from their couch with a fake email address and zero consequences.
Meta insists it is working on the problem, which in corporate speak means they have opened a ticket and assigned it to someone’s backlog. Users, naturally, are advised to simply not get scammed — a suggestion that ranks somewhere between “just don’t get sick” and “have you tried being rich?”
The real innovation here is outsourcing your security problems to criminals. Why hire expensive fraud teams when bad actors will do it for free, one ransom at a time?