Warner Bros. Discovery has been using DMCA copyright takedowns to remove posts on social media that contained just discussions about the first episode of the HBO series Lanterns, a report by Puck said.
The posts in question didn’t contain any leaked stills or footage from the show – just people’s comments about a major plot twist revealed in the first episode, which had previously been rumored and reported on by some outlets.
The series, a DC one co-created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, premiered on Sunday, and its final moments delivered a shocking fate for one of the show’s characters.
Cosmic Book News (this link contains spoilers for Lanterns), an independent pop-culture site run by editor Matt McGloin, had spent months piecing the twist together from casting, promotional footage, and the show’s timeline; by March, McGloin was predicting the ending outright.
Warner Bros. was not happy about this, and went on to use copyright law to remove posts on X, YouTube, and Facebook. The first takedowns happened on July 10, two weeks before Comic-Con, when an anonymous Reddit post claimed to reveal the twist, and it spread to X. An HBO Max social strategist then filed a takedown notice covering six posts from five accounts, including Cosmic Book News, describing the infringement as “people discussing the spoilers of the first episode of Lanterns.”
Hellbound and Down 