Nov 3, 2026 · 27 min · 8 segments
Independent journalists around the world are falling victim to fake copyright strikes against their content on social media, especially when their stories are critical of powerful figures. Then we…
Shiona McCallumHost
Chris VallanceHost
Imran Rahman-Jones
We're starting today with an update to a story we covered a couple of months ago about extortion on social media.
Instagram users were being targeted with fake claims of copyright which would suspend their accounts.
Then they were being charged ransoms to remove the claims and reinstate their accounts.
all the takedowns will be from the same email.
So either they own every piece of content on the platform, or it's a sign of exploitation that somehow the system doesn't detect.
That story was reported by TechLife's Imran Rahman-Jones, and he's here with me now.
So after that went out on Tech Life, another listener, Zakaria, got in touch from Somalia, saying a similar thing was going on with independent media outlets there.
And it turns out that I was looking into a similar story in another part of the world, which we'll get to in a bit.
The situation there is unstable with Somalia in a civil war since the early 1990s.
And there are lots of rival factions, which include the government, militias, local groups and pirates.
At the same time, the freedom of the press is severely restricted and it can be very dangerous to report there.
I got in touch with Abdallah Mumin, Secretary General for the SJS, the Somali Journalist Syndicate, which is a collection of independent journalists.
In 2022, October, I have been kidnapped and then put in prison.
And then I've been put on trial just for advocating for media freedom in my country, Somalia.
And I'm not the only one.
And as well as physical attacks there, there are attacks on independent journalists' ability to get information out to readers in Somalia.
We're starting today with an update to a story we covered a couple of months ago about extortion on social media.
Instagram users were being targeted with fake claims of copyright which would suspend their accounts.
Then they were being charged ransoms to remove the claims and reinstate their accounts.
all the takedowns will be from the same email.
So either they own every piece of content on the platform, or it's a sign of exploitation that somehow the system doesn't detect.
That story was reported by TechLife's Imran Rahman-Jones, and he's here with me now.
So after that went out on Tech Life, another listener, Zakaria, got in touch from Somalia, saying a similar thing was going on with independent media outlets there.
And it turns out that I was looking into a similar story in another part of the world, which we'll get to in a bit.
The situation there is unstable with Somalia in a civil war since the early 1990s.
And there are lots of rival factions, which include the government, militias, local groups and pirates.
At the same time, the freedom of the press is severely restricted and it can be very dangerous to report there.
I got in touch with Abdallah Mumin, Secretary General for the SJS, the Somali Journalist Syndicate, which is a collection of independent journalists.
In 2022, October, I have been kidnapped and then put in prison.
And then I've been put on trial just for advocating for media freedom in my country, Somalia.
And I'm not the only one.
And as well as physical attacks there, there are attacks on independent journalists' ability to get information out to readers in Somalia.
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