Fandom wiki takedown, fast domain takedown, and who actually holds the delete button
Short answer. A fandom wiki takedown starts with the wiki’s own admins, who can delete a page, and moves to Fandom’s copyright desk only if they refuse. That desk reads notices only from a verified support account. A fast domain takedown comes from the registrar or the host acting on proof of phishing or malware, not on a complaint about what a site says. For every other target, find who holds the delete button before you file.
Most takedown requests fail for the same reason: they go to someone who cannot delete the thing. A fandom wiki takedown sent to a page’s author goes nowhere, a complaint about a scam site sent to its own contact form gets read by the scammer, and a flag on a YouTube video joins a queue that machines already fill. The request that works names the right target, cites the rule that party enforces, and carries the identifier it acts on.
This guide works through nine kinds of target, starting with the two that are hardest to route, a fandom wiki takedown and a fast domain takedown, then YouTube videos, GitHub repos, marketplace listings, Discord servers and reposted art. For each one it states who can delete it, what they act on, and whether any clock is published. Where an official page is silent, the guide says so rather than guessing.
Who can actually delete someone else’s page, video, repo or domain?
Almost never the person asking. Each target has one party that holds the delete button: local admins and Fandom staff for a wiki page, the registrar or the host for a domain, YouTube for a video or channel, GitHub for a repository, the marketplace for a listing, and the owner alone for a Discord server. A takedown request works when it reaches that party with the identifier it acts on.
The table is the ledger the rest of this guide is built on. “Published clock” means a time the platform itself states in its own documentation; where a row says none, any timeline you read elsewhere is an estimate from a vendor or a forum.
| Target | Who can delete it | What they act on | Published clock |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fandom wiki page | Local wiki admins; Fandom staff | Wiki rules; copyright notice from a verified support account | None; unverified email deleted unread after 14 days |
| Wikipedia article | Administrators, after a deletion process | Deletion policy; biography rules; DMCA notice to Wikimedia | Proposed deletion 7 days; discussion at least 7 full days |
| Domain or website | Registrar (whole domain); host (files); a court (seizure) | Evidence of DNS abuse; DMCA notice to the host; court order | ICANN example: suspension within 2 business days, not contractual |
| YouTube video or channel | YouTube | Copyright webform; privacy complaint; guideline flag | None for flags; strikes expire after 90 days |
| GitHub repository | GitHub | DMCA notice | About 1 business day for the owner to fix files |
| eBay listing | eBay VeRO team | Notice of Claimed Infringement from the rights owner | None |
| craigslist post | Other users, by flagging | Enough flags | Automatic once the threshold is hit |
| Discord server | The owner; Discord Trust & Safety | Reported messages and accounts | High-harm reports 24–48 hours |
| Facebook group or Page | Admins; Meta | Reports to Facebook, not to the admins | Group paused 7 days after its last admin leaves |
Two patterns run down the table. The rights owner always has a stronger route than a bystander, because copyright and trademark notices create legal duties that a flag does not. And the platforms that publish a clock are the ones that face a regulator or a contract: ICANN for registrars, which is why a fast domain takedown is possible at all, and the DMCA for GitHub and YouTube.
How does a fandom wiki takedown work?
A fandom wiki takedown runs on two tracks. The local wiki’s admins can delete a page or revert an edit under that wiki’s own rules, often within a day if they agree with you. Fandom the company acts on copyright and legal complaints through its support desk, and since July 2023 that desk has required complainants to open a separate support account before anything they send is read.
The support-account rule is the detail most complainants miss, and a 2025 court case shows what it costs. In Michael Grecco Productions v. Fandom (C.D. Cal.), a photography studio sent thirty takedown emails between November 2023 and April 2024 to [email protected], covering 28 of its photographs. None reached a person.
Mail from senders without a Fandom support account went to a “suspension queue” and was deleted unread after 14 days. When the studio emailed Fandom’s general counsel on 18 May 2024, the images were gone two days later.Eric Goldman, Technology & Marketing Law Blog, August 2025, summarising the court’s 9 May and 9 July 2025 rulings
The court granted Fandom summary judgment on the infringement claim, finding no evidence that Fandom knew of the images before that May email. In the judge’s words, Fandom “may have been blind to the Takedown Requests” but was not willfully blind. For anyone filing a fandom wiki takedown today, the lesson is procedural: open the support account first, with the same email address you will file from.
Fandom can also refuse. In July 2026 the admins of the Grand Theft Auto Wiki, who had moved to their own site, found their text copied onto the old Fandom-hosted wiki and filed a copyright notice. Fandom first replied that “the overlapping material does not constitute copyright infringement or plagiarism”, then removed the content after press coverage, according to Plagiarism Today (21 July 2026). A fandom wiki takedown can therefore turn on Fandom’s own view of originality, not only on the law.
Ask the local admins
Every Fandom wiki lists its administrators. A page that breaks the wiki’s own rules, such as harassment of a real person or an off-topic article, is theirs to delete, and they answer faster than the company. A fandom wiki takedown settled locally also leaves no legal paperwork behind.
Open a Fandom support account
The support account is separate from a wiki login. Without one, a fandom wiki takedown sent by email can sit in the suspension queue and expire unread.
File under copyright or trademark
Fandom’s guided form has an “I have a copyright or trademark issue” category that builds the DMCA notice. List each page URL, the original work, and your statement of ownership.
Keep the ticket and the page history
A wiki page can be restored by any editor. Save the revision IDs of the infringing versions, so a repeat appearance can be reported against the same ticket rather than as a new fandom wiki takedown.
The limit: a fandom wiki takedown removes copied material or rule-breaking pages, not accurate fan commentary about a public product. Fandom publishes no response time for its support desk, and it will not delete a whole community over one page.
How to get a Wikipedia page taken down
Nobody outside Wikipedia’s administrator group can delete an article. Anyone can start the process, though: tag the article for proposed deletion, which lets any administrator delete it after seven days if no one objects, or nominate it at Articles for deletion, where “the discussion lasts at least seven full days” and administrators close on policy rather than a vote count.
The route that most often helps a private individual is the biography rule. Wikipedia’s deletion policy lets a discussion about a relatively unknown, non-public person close as delete when the subject has asked for deletion and there is no clear consensus to keep. Unsourced biographies of living people can be deleted after seven days if nobody adds a reliable source.
Copyright goes to the Wikimedia Foundation instead, which says it pushes back on requests it considers invalid. Its first transparency report, covering 2012–2014, recorded that 41% of DMCA takedown requests were granted and none of 304 general content removal requests. The Wikipedia Signpost reported that the Foundation received 10 takedown notices in the first half of 2024.
The limit is visibility. A deletion discussion is public and archived, and a notable subject stays notable whatever the subject prefers. Before you work out how to get a Wikipedia page taken down, check whether a sourced correction would solve the problem with less attention.
How does domain takedown work, and what makes a fast domain takedown?
How does domain takedown work? Three parties can act. The registrar can suspend the whole domain, the host can remove the files, and a CDN such as Cloudflare forwards the complaint to both. A fast domain takedown happens when the complaint is DNS abuse, meaning phishing, malware, botnets or pharming, backed by evidence a registrar can check in minutes. Complaints about what a site says move slowly or not at all.
The rules changed in April 2024. ICANN’s amended registrar contract, section 3.18, now says registrars “must promptly take the appropriate mitigation action(s)” when they receive actionable evidence of DNS abuse. ICANN’s advisory gives a fake bank login page as its first example and expects a hold on the domain within two business days, while stating that those timelines “are not contractual requirements”.
Netcraft reports a median phishing takedown time of 33 minutes. Cloudflare reported a median under one hour for hosted phishing in the second half of 2024, against 4.5 days for other hosted abuse.Netcraft platform page; Cloudflare H2 2024 abuse report
Those figures describe phishing, the one case where a fast domain takedown is realistic. The broader picture is slower. A CircleID analysis of about 530 ICANN compliance investigations between April 2024 and April 2026 found registrars took action in roughly 66% of cases, and about a quarter closed without the abuse stopping. The volume is large: the Anti-Phishing Working Group counted 1,069,681 phishing attacks in the second quarter of 2026 alone.
| What speeds a fast domain takedown | What slows it down |
|---|---|
| A live phishing page with screenshots, the full URL and a timestamp | A complaint about reviews, criticism or opinion |
| The registrar’s abuse contact from the domain’s RDAP record | A message to the site’s own contact form |
| Parallel reports to registrar and host | Reporting only to the CDN, which forwards rather than removes |
| A gTLD such as .com under ICANN’s contract | A country-code domain under its own registry rules |
In practice a fast domain takedown request has four parts: the full URL of the abusive page, screenshots with timestamps, the registrar’s abuse address from the domain’s RDAP record, and the hosting provider found from the site’s IP address. Send the same package to both at once, and report the page to Google Safe Browsing so browsers warn visitors while the suspension is pending.
For copied content on an otherwise legitimate site, the right instrument is a copyright notice to the host, set out in this guide to DMCA notices against a website. The limit of any fast domain takedown is reappearance: the same operator can register a near-identical name within hours, so keep the evidence package ready to resend.
What is an FBI website takedown?
An FBI website takedown is a court-ordered seizure, not a removal request, and nothing about it is a fast domain takedown in the registrar sense. Prosecutors obtain a seizure warrant, and the registry or registrar points the domain’s name servers at government servers that display the seizure banner. When the FBI seized BreachForums in June 2023, BleepingComputer reported the domains were moved to the name servers law enforcement uses for seizures.
A private person cannot request an FBI website takedown. Report the crime to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov and keep your own records. The banner shows that the domain is under government control; it does not prove the servers were seized, and mirrors on other domains can keep running.
How do you take down a YouTube video that someone else uploaded?
How do you take down a YouTube video you did not upload? Pick the route that matches your right. A copyright owner files YouTube’s copyright webform, a person shown or identified files a privacy complaint, and anyone can flag a breach of the Community Guidelines. The first two are requests YouTube assesses on their facts; a flag joins a review queue that automated systems mostly fill already.
From April to June 2026 YouTube removed 11,159,676 videos. Automated flagging detected 11,005,420 of them first; user flags came first on 123,855, about 1.1%.YouTube Community Guidelines enforcement report, Google Transparency Report
So the honest answer to how do you get a YouTube video taken down is evidence sent through the right form, not the number of flags. YouTube’s own help pages say the volume of reports does not change the outcome of a review. The table shows what each route can produce.
| Route | Who can file | Result if accepted | Strike on the channel? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copyright removal webform | The owner or an authorised agent | Video removed; your name shown in its place | Yes |
| Privacy complaint | The person identified in the video | Video removed or edited | No |
| Community Guidelines flag | Any signed-in user | Removal or age restriction | Yes, after a first warning |
| Court order | A party with an order | Removal, sometimes country-limited | No |
How do I take down a YouTube video that copies my work? Use the webform, one entry per video URL, and add timestamps for where your material appears. The fields are explained in this walkthrough of YouTube’s copyright removal form. The same form is how to get videos taken down from YouTube in bulk, because it accepts several URLs in one submission. If the video shows your face or your address, the privacy complaint is how to get a video taken down on YouTube without owning any copyright at all.
The limit: YouTube shares the claimant’s legal name and email with the uploader on a copyright removal, and the uploader can counter-notify. That is the trade-off when you get YouTube video taken down on copyright grounds.
How to get a YouTube account taken down
No single request will get a YouTube channel taken down. YouTube’s help centre states: “No, you can’t submit a copyright removal request for an entire channel or playlist.” A channel goes when it collects three strikes within 90 days, commits one severe violation, or exists mainly to break the rules. So how to get a YouTube account taken down comes down to removing its videos one valid request at a time.
Spam is what ends most channels. YouTube removed 2,732,395 channels from April to June 2026, and 84.5% of them were for spam, misleading content or scams, according to the same Transparency Report. Anyone working out how to get someone’s YouTube channel taken down for harassment should expect a slower, video-by-video process; the layers involved are set out in this guide on taking down a whole YouTube channel.
How to delete someone else’s comment on YouTube
You can delete someone else’s comment on YouTube only on your own videos. The channel owner, and any moderators the owner appoints in YouTube Studio, can remove a comment or hide the user from the channel. On a video you do not own, the comment’s three-dot menu offers Report, and YouTube applies its guidelines, which cover “comments, links, posts, and thumbnails” as well as videos.
How do you find YouTube videos that were taken down?
Start from the exact URL or the 11-character video ID. Paste it into the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which often stores the watch page but not the video file, then into metadata indexes such as Filmot, which search titles and subtitles of videos that no longer play. Without the ID, old links in chats, emails and forum posts are the usual way back.
The removal notice itself is evidence. A copyright removal shows the claimant’s name where the video was; a guideline removal says the video broke YouTube’s terms; an uploader’s own deletion says the video is unavailable. When people ask how to find a YouTube video that was taken down, that notice tells them whether a copy is likely to exist anywhere.
How to find taken down YouTube videos you uploaded yourself is different: YouTube Studio keeps the record of strikes and claims on your own channel. For other people’s uploads, archive coverage is patchy, and the Internet Archive keeps no guarantee of any snapshot. To find taken down YouTube videos that were popular, search the title in quotes; reuploads often keep it.
The limit: knowing how to find YouTube videos that were taken down does not give you a licence to reupload them. A reupload of a video removed for copyright invites the same claim against your own channel.
How does a GitHub takedown request work?
A GitHub takedown request is a DMCA notice sent through GitHub’s form at github.com/contact/dmca or to [email protected]. Under the GitHub takedown policy, GitHub gives the repository owner about one business day to remove specific infringing files, disables a whole repository “expeditiously” when all of it infringes, and publishes every notice, with personal contact details redacted, in its public github/dmca repository.
Forks are the trap in a GitHub repo takedown request. GitHub does not disable forks along with the parent repository, and a network of more than 100 repositories needs a sworn statement that you checked a representative number of the forks. A counter notice gives the claimant 10 to 14 business days to file suit before GitHub can restore the content.
GitHub processed 2,661 DMCA notices in 2025, which took down 47,228 repositories, and 645 notices cited circumvention of technical protection, up 41%.GitHub transparency data, as reported by GIGAZINE, 21 April 2026
Because every notice is published, the filer’s name and the claimed work become a public record. That record, and the time each clock runs, is covered in more depth in the guide to what a GitHub DMCA notice puts on record. The limit: an open-source licence dispute is only a copyright claim when the licence terms are actually broken.
How do you take down a listing on Depop, eBay, craigslist or Fiverr?
Marketplaces delete listings on two kinds of evidence: a rights owner’s notice, or a rule breach visible in the listing itself. A buyer or bystander uses the report button; a brand or creator uses the intellectual-property route. Only craigslist removes a post because enough users flagged it, and it is the one large marketplace that says so in its own help pages.
How do I take down a Depop listing?
How do I take down a Depop listing that sells fakes? Open the item, tap the three-dot menu, choose Report item and pick the reason, such as a counterfeit; Red Points’ guide to Depop describes that path. Depop publishes no review time for listing reports, and the seller of a removed fake can relist, so save the listing URL and the seller’s username.
How long does eBay VeRO takedown take?
eBay publishes no clock for its Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) programme. A rights owner or agent files a Notice of Claimed Infringement, and third-party guides report listings coming down within a few days, longer when notices pile up. So how long does eBay VeRO takedown take depends mostly on how complete the notice is. eBay’s 2025 Global Transparency Report counts about 75,000 rights owners in VeRO and about 7.9 million proactive removals. Only the rights owner or an agent can file.
Can you get a craigslist post removed by flagging it?
Yes, and craigslist is the exception here. To get craigslist post flagged for removal, use the prohibited flag on the post itself. craigslist’s flagging FAQ says free ads flagged by enough users are removed automatically and that millions of postings are removed this way each month. It also says a post that follows the rules may be reposted, so flagging a compliant post achieves nothing lasting.
Is a Fiverr account takedown possible?
A Fiverr account takedown is not something a third party can request directly. Report the gig or the seller profile, or, as a rights owner, file an intellectual-property report with proof of ownership. Fiverr’s Community Standards say it “reserves the right to permanently suspend accounts which are involved in infringement of intellectual property rights.” Fiverr decides; the reporter is not told the outcome.
Can you delete someone’s Discord server or Facebook group?
No. How to delete someone’s Discord server has one honest answer: only the server owner can delete a Discord server. Discord’s Trust & Safety team can remove a server that breaks its rules, and Meta can remove a Facebook group or Page, but both act on reported messages, posts and admin behaviour. Neither offers a form that deletes a community on request.
On Discord, report the specific messages with their Message Links, which carry the server ID, and the accounts that posted them. Discord’s safety article says high-harm reports are reviewed in 24 to 48 hours and lower-harm ones in about a week, and that the reporter’s identity is not shared. Duplicate or coordinated reports can cost the reporter access to reporting. Discord’s transparency report for the second half of 2021 recorded 52,177 servers removed, the most recent server-removal total found for this guide.
Group/page takedown help on Facebook starts with one fact: “Report to group admins” sends nothing to Facebook, and the admins learn who reported. Meta’s transparency page (updated 12 November 2024) says groups and Pages are removed for a violating name, description or cover, for posts by admins and moderators, and for content admins approve. A group whose only admin leaves is paused if no new admin accepts within seven days.
How to get reposted art taken down
Send a copyright notice to the platform hosting the repost, one URL per copy, as the artist or the artist’s agent. A repost is among the cleanest takedown cases online, because ownership is easy to show with the original file, its creation date and the working layers. A credit line in the caption does not make an unlicensed repost legal.
Fan art copied onto a wiki follows the same notice rules as a fandom wiki takedown, through Fandom’s support desk. Each platform reviews only its own copy. A repost on X goes through the process in this guide to taking down a tweet or X account; a single Instagram post goes through the steps for reporting one Instagram post; a TikTok slideshow of your work follows the route for getting someone else’s TikTok removed; and image hosts have their own desk, covered in the guide to an Imgur DMCA notice.
Two platform rules change how to get reposted art taken down in practice. Pinterest’s copyright policy offers to remove all Pins, but that matches identical copies only, and the person who saved the Pin may receive a copy of the notice with the reporter’s full legal name. DeviantArt applies a three-strikes repeat-infringer policy and removes on a proper notice. Under US law, a counter notice lets the host restore the art within 10 to 14 business days unless you file suit, according to the US Copyright Office.
What can no takedown request do?
No takedown request makes a platform, registrar or court act. Each request asks a third party to apply its own rules or the law, and that party decides. A rights owner’s notice under the DMCA creates a legal duty to respond; a bystander’s report creates none. Nothing in this guide is legal advice.
- A removed listing, repo, channel or domain can return under a new name. Keep the permanent IDs from the first request.
- A fast domain takedown stops one name, not the operator; a fandom wiki takedown removes one page, not the mirror wikis or search caches that copied it.
- Copyright notices usually reveal the filer’s name to the other side, on GitHub publicly.
- Opinion, criticism and accurate reporting are not removable by copyright or abuse reports; using a notice against them risks liability for misrepresentation under US law.
- Threats, extortion and child-safety material go to the police and the platform’s emergency route, not a standard report.
When the same material sits on several platforms at once, the job stops being a single report and becomes casework. The content removal service page sets out how Clearline scopes that work and what it cannot promise.
Frequently asked questions
Can I file a fandom wiki takedown without a Fandom account?
You need a Fandom support account, which is separate from a wiki login. Court records in Michael Grecco Productions v. Fandom show that email from senders without one went to a suspension queue and was deleted unread after 14 days.
How fast is a fast domain takedown in practice?
For live phishing reported with evidence, Netcraft reports a 33-minute median and Cloudflare under one hour for hosted phishing. ICANN’s own example expects action within two business days. Complaints about a site’s content, rather than DNS abuse, can take weeks or never succeed.
Who do I contact for a fast domain takedown of a phishing site?
The registrar’s abuse contact, found in the domain’s RDAP record, and the hosting provider, found from the site’s IP address. A fast domain takedown needs evidence of phishing or malware that the registrar can verify, such as the live URL and timestamped screenshots.
How do you take down a video on YouTube if it shows your face?
File a privacy complaint as the person identified in the video. An accepted privacy complaint removes or edits the video and does not give the channel a strike. Copyright is not needed for this route.
How to get YouTube to take down a video faster?
Use the correct form, give the exact video URL and timestamps, and file once. Repeated flags do not speed a review, and YouTube’s help pages say the number of reports does not change the outcome.
Can the FBI take down a website I report?
Only through a criminal case and a court-ordered seizure. Report the crime at ic3.gov. Separately, report phishing or malware to the domain’s registrar and host, which can act within days without any court.
How to get YouTube video taken down if the uploader ignores me?
Skip the uploader and file with YouTube directly: the copyright webform if you own the material, a privacy complaint if you are identifiable in it, or a guideline flag otherwise. YouTube, not the uploader, holds the delete button.
Sent the request to the wrong desk?
Send the links to the page, video, listing or domain and what you have already filed. The review names the party that can delete it, the rule it enforces, and what the request can and cannot remove.