by Megan Mallia, University of Malta, Malta.
Deepfakes? Sensational claims? Scam text messages? Disinformation is much more than these things, but media literacy education often tends to stick to the stereotypes. Sometimes, bad actors use tactics that are less obvious. I’m talking about bogus copyright complaints made to Google, which work to get legitimate information removed from search results.
As a research assistant within the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Malta, I form part of MedDMO, the Mediterranean Digital Media Observatory. One of our latest investigations looked into a recent and seemingly coordinated barrage of bogus copyright claims made to Google that targeted Maltese journalists and newsrooms writing about a major corruption scandal.
For context, this particular corruption scandal involved the privatisation of three of Malta’s state hospitals, which was first reported on in 2015 by my aunt, Daphne Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist. Last April, a magisterial inquiry into the hospitals deal led to criminal charges against key figures, including Malta’s former prime minister Joseph Muscat, his then-chief of staff Keith Schembri, and a minister of his then-cabinet Konrad Mizzi. Dozens of other individuals and companies were set to face charges, including one Ram Tumuluri, the former boss of Vitals Global Healthcare, the firm that had won the concession. In May 2024, Times of Malta reported that scores of bogus copyright complaint claims targeting Maltese websites had been made to Google since March 2024, which was just weeks before the conclusion of the magisterial inquiry.
I had smelt a rat before the Times published the article while doing research for a separate MedDMO report on disinformation surrounding the hospitals deal: searches on specific keywords were returning a message that some results had been removed because of claims of plagiarism. When the Times published, the rat stank.
The complaints targeted sites carrying articles about the former Vitals boss. All complaints claimed the same thing: that legitimate media had plagiarised articles supposedly written by the person/people making the submissions. This, of course, was not true.
False copyright complaints are a tactic used by bad actors globally to try to get key information removed from Google’s search results. Basically, it’s a way of whitewashing the web.
There appeared to be a pattern to the case. In September 2024, we dug a little deeper. We ran advanced searches on Google, pairing the ‘site:’ search operator followed by the URLs of various Maltese news sites and blogs with the keywords ‘ram tumuluri’ and ‘vitals global healthcare’. Each time, the same message appeared at the bottom of the search results: In response to multiple complaints that we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed [number] results from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaints that caused the removals at LumenDatabase.org: [hyperlinks to records of each complaint].
Through our research, we found that some content was targeted by a number of complaints. One post on my aunt’s website Running Commentary was the subject of at least five submissions, each filed under a different name/pseudonym and in close succession – and each claiming that the post plagiarised a different article.
Our report, published on 8th January 2025, explains the sinister disinformation tactic as well as how we went about investigating the case in much more detail. But there are points I think worth highlighting.
First, disinformation and censorship tactics are not always as obvious as we may think. Disinformation has slowly become almost synonymous with malicious AI usage, but it goes beyond that.
Second, bogus copyright complaints can be used to censor journalistic work and discredit legitimate reporting. Rather than calling an article an outright lie, bad actors globally are working in the shadows to actively conceal the information.
While it is definitely important to speak about the dangers of fabricated images and sensational claims, there should be more awareness about the practice of submitting fake complaints to Google to censor search results on matters of public interest. In other words: don’t let the bad guys get away with it.
Author
Megan Mallia, Research Assistant, Department of Media and Communications at the University of Malta, Malta – MedDMO, The Mediterranean Digital Media Observatory.
