WordPress.com, operated by Automattic, has highlighted a growing issue with DMCA takedown notices in its latest transparency report, revealing that one company filed 838 inactionable reports in six months, many targeting content that does not exist on the platform. According to Automattic, the surge is likely driven by financial incentives, with automated systems used to maximize revenue through mass reporting.

Notices Flood Platforms

The company, which manages the popular blogging platform and Tumblr, has been tracking DMCA takedown abuse for over a decade. In its latest report covering July through December 2025, Automattic processed 2,431 takedown notices, a 20% increase compared to the same period in 2024. This rise is attributed in part to the increasing use of AI to generate mass reports.

Automattic’s Trust & Safety team noted that third-party monitoring services are exploiting the DMCA notice-and-takedown system, with some using AI to generate bulk reports. According to the report, 86% of all takedown notices were rejected due to various shortcomings, with the rejection rate increasing further in the last half of 2025.

The company has documented over 123,211 DMCA takedown notices since 2014, with only 27% of them resulting in actual content removal. The high rejection rate has been consistent, but the recent trend of notices has raised new concerns about the system’s integrity.

Enforcity Under Scrutiny

Automattic specifically called out Enforcity, which filed 838 ‘inactionable’ notices in the second half of 2025, accounting for 34% of all notices during that period. The reports allegedly targeted content that did not exist on the platform, including static pages with no content and dynamic search query URLs that returned no results.

Steve Blythe, Automattic’s Head of Policy and Process, explained that the first notices from Enforcity started appearing in August 2025, claiming to protect OnlyFans creators. However, none of the reported links were associated with any infringing material. ‘The targets included both static pages with no content, and dynamic search query URLs with keywords pre-filled by the complainants that returned no results,’ Blythe said.

Automattic contacted Enforcity multiple times in September 2025 to address the issue, but the notices continued despite assurances from the company that problems would be resolved. As of January 2026, however, no new DMCA notices had been filed by Enforcity in the past weeks.

Financial Incentives Behind the Surge

Automattic argues that the surge in notices is driven by payment structures that prioritize volume over accuracy. The company notes that Enforcity’s AI-Driven DMCA content protection service costs $29 per month, targeting OnlyFans creators with a dedicated success hub.

According to Enforcity’s website, its service helped customers remove over 350 million ‘infringements’ with a 99% success rate, while protecting $600 million in revenue. However, these claims have not been independently verified by TorrentFreak.

Blythe emphasized the risks of the current system, noting that the DMCA notification process, while empowering creators, is frequently abused. ‘We routinely see invalid and inappropriate submissions from third-party agents that charge creators to scour the web and fire off automated notices, seemingly indiscriminately,’ he said. ‘With the rapid development of AI technology, the flaws in the DMCA are at risk of increasingly resulting in a chilling effect on freedom of expression.’

For now, it appears that Automattic’s repeated outreach has had some effect, but whether Enforcity and similar services will change their practices in the long run remains to be seen. The company has said it will continue to call out abusive or error-prone reporters, including those using AI tools.