The day ahead of national signing day, the official Twitter account of the Texas Longhorns was suspended for about 10 hours. On signing day itself, Georgia, Missouri, and South Florida also all had their football accounts suspended temporarily.
On national signing day, college football programs across the United States use social media for important communications such as to announce and promote their signees. Although Twitter has not officially commented on the reason for the suspensions, each account received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) takedown notice shortly before its suspension.
Statesman reported that Twitter automatically suspends accounts that receive three DMCA within a certain time period. According to Twitter’s copyright policy, “Twitter may suspend and warn repeat [DMCA] violators, and in more serious cases, permanently terminate user accounts.” Twitter posts redacted copies of each DMCA takedown notice on the Lumen database. A search on Lumen reveals that Texas, Georgia, Missouri, and South Florida have received five DMCA takedown notices within the past year. The notices are unclear about the posted content that violated the DMCA, but someone from the Missouri football program said their violations dealt with the use of copyrighted music in videos posted on their feed.
Although all four teams had their accounts restored following the suspensions, there were negative consequences. According to USA Today, Texas’ Twitter account temporarily dropped from 189,000 followers to 12,000 followers and was unverified for a time. All of Texas’ followers were eventually reinstated, but the inability to reach followers at such a crucial time does not help the promotion of any of these programs.