If you’re searching for Georgia State’s football Twitter account, you’re out of luck. The team’s account was suspended from Twitter in the early morning of Sept. 19 after a copyright complaint was filed against a video they posted last year.
According to Will Owens, digital media coordinator for Georgia State athletics, the team is taking the necessary steps to comply with Twitter’s ruling — and hopefully reinstate the account quickly.
Owens said this isn’t the first time they’ve faced trouble with copyright issues.
“We’ve received a few warnings on Facebook and Instagram, but we were able to resolve all of those,” Owens said Thursday afternoon.
But this time, Twitter’s automatic DMCA claim system shut down the account, which boasts 21.4K followers.
Due to how often teams are posting “hype videos” on their social media platforms, similar Twitter “takedowns” are relatively common among college team accounts, according to Owens.
He pointed to an instance in May, in which both the verified Iowa and Iowa State football accounts were suspended on the same day. The story gained national attention due to the programs’ bitter rivalry.
“It happens to big schools. It happens to little schools. It mostly affects individual users,” Owens said.
Twitter’s copyright policy states, “Twitter will respond to reports of alleged copyright infringement, such as allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted image as a profile or header photo, allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted video or image uploaded through our media hosting services, or Tweets containing links to allegedly infringing materials.”
In this instance, the football team’s account used unauthorized music in a 2018 video.
“This is a relatively [new] problem,” Owens said. “Twitter has been the most relaxed on [copyright claims] for a long time, whereas Facebook and Instagram … are stricter, so we were a lot more careful on Facebook and Instagram.”
During a summer conference in Florida, Owens said a Twitter representative addressed the stricter policies. In an effort to avoid further issues, the digital team at Georgia State has been practicing new guidelines ever since.
“More and more schools every week were losing their accounts,” Owens said. “[The representative] told us, ‘Hey, it is getting more serious. It is not going away. Here are some resources for you to understand more,’ … so I brought [the resources] back here.”
Since the meeting, Owens said none of the team’s new posts have been flagged. The issue stems from last year’s practices.
