The ongoing social media attacks—which have escalated to include the shutdown of newspapers’ social media accounts and the suspension of journalists’ and public figures’ profiles—constitute an organized operation in and of themselves.
I examined what the budget for such an attack might be, given that it involves a massive number of users capable of triggering investigations into posts made in accordance with social media platforms’ own rules, as if they were in violation of those rules.
Such operations are common in India, where there is an abundance of personnel available for social media attacks at low cost.
The reason page-takedown budgets are so high stems from the fact that content deemed appropriate according to Facebook’s guidelines is turned into a suspicious case through waves of objections and complaints, involving a large number of people in the process. The method followed in such cases operates on a ‘attack + maintenance + repeat attack’ model.
For an attack exploiting Facebook’s ‘copyright’ sensitivity to succeed, there must be mass complaints, and these must be filed in waves by a large number of real profiles rather than bot accounts. This also multiplies the attack’s budget.
There is no publicly available, definitive pricing for the cost of such digital intervention operations. However, analyses based on industry data and the fees for similar services indicate a significant budget.
Professional ‘copyright protection’, or ‘reputation management’ companies charge as much as $50,000 per month for actual copyright monitoring. Based on this standard consulting fee, you can imagine that the figures they would demand to push a page with no copyright issues into a suspicious status through serial complaints would far exceed this amount.
Attacks involving page takedowns and news removal fall under the category of ‘high-level organized operations’. Considering that hundreds of pieces of content were deleted, data suggests that a budget of at least $5,000 is required per complaint. In cases of serial complaints, this figure multiplies.
Regarding the operation conducted in Cyprus, the cost of the process to freeze the pages of such institutions like Haber Kıbrıs, Yenidüzen, and Kıbrıs Postası—which publish content sensitive to Facebook’s policies—is estimated to reach $70,000 per newspaper. For politicians, the figure is slightly higher. If the pages in question have political sensitivity (such as those of Kudret Özersay), the cost reaches $90,000.
The money paid is not only spent to close the pages but also to prevent them from reopening. Even if a page is reopened after an appeal, the cost of automated systems that send new fake warnings within seconds is the operation’s true ‘destructive’ power. Every day that closed pages remain inaccessible signifies that the attack continues and that the budget is increasing. Therefore, estimated figures provided above are subject to an increase with each passing day.
Looking at the data above, those who launched this operation—targeting newspapers, journalists, politicians, and others facing difficulties in sharing content due to alleged issues with their content—have set aside 1 million dollars.
Considering the deleted content, who would spend 1 million dollars to ensure these materials are erased from archives? What is the income of those who are bothered by news reports and are willing to spend 1 million dollars that allows them to afford such an amount?
I believe these are the questions that will need to be addressed once the attacks cease, the issue is resolved, and we regain access to pages with missing content.
