In April 2019, Starz was widely criticized in the tech press and by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for sending legal demands to Twitter in order to remove links to a news article which discussed piracy but contained neither pirated content nor links to pirated content. Starz initially responded by issuing further DMCA complaints against those criticizing them, including against a tweet from the Electronic Frontier Foundation stating that "Starz should withdraw its takedown and refrain from harassing journalists". However, they subsequently apologized, clarified that the invalid DMCA claims were sent on their behalf by a third party contractor called The Social Element and promised that they are "working with our vendors to reinstate any such content that was inappropriately targeted for removal."