Social media is calling for a boycott of Netflix’s comedy-drama series The Gnaw after a video from a 2014 podcast was released in which one of the show’s actors, David Chow, described a rape he allegedly took part in.

Back in 2014, Chou released a statement claiming that the clip was a “performance” he was recording while he was in an unstable mental state. Journalists mentioned the video again in the background of the release of the new Netflix series “Gryznia”/Beef, and it quickly became viral on social networks.

The actor has now filed a request to have the tweets with the clip removed, citing copyright infringement (DMCA) for some reason – however, the complaint was successful and some posts with the clips have already been removed from Twitter.

“Several Twitter users @MediumSizeMeech and @aurabogado re-uploaded a clip from Episode 106 of the DVDASA podcast, Erection Quest, originally published on March 10, 2014, without our consent,” Chow’s request to remove him reads.

David Choe returns to Twitter to get a video I write about it talking about a woman that I can be happy to return to biographies.

He claims his *nonprofit* owns the copyright to the video of him talking about the alleged rape. pic.twitter.com/6IaSXTOeQ1

— Aura Bogado (@aurabogado) April 16, 2023

Twitter responded quickly by suspending the journalists’ accounts. Freedom of the Press criticized the decision, noting that “the abuse of DMCA takedown procedures to censor journalists is a serious and widespread problem.”

The social network’s CEO himself, Elon Musk, last month called copyright holders who use takedown notices as a weapon “overzealous” and “a plague on humanity.”

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And Twitter’s head of trust and security, Ella Irwin, told Arstechnika that the social network reviews every DMCA complaint in detail to make sure it’s valid. Among the common reasons for denying requests, she cited “a fraudulent message in which someone claims to be the owner of the rights when in fact they are not,” or “a message where someone demands that a user’s account be suspended unless they pay the rights owner money, which often turn out to be fraudulent.”

In addition to his acting work in “Gryzna”, David Chow is known as a graffiti artist and designed title pictures for many shows. Chow co-hosted a DVDASA podcast with porn star Asa Akira, where in an episode of The Erection Quest, he described an encounter with Rose, a black masseuse, whom he allegedly coerced into having sex. After Akira “joked” that Chow had indeed raped Rose, Rose replied:

“I admit it’s rape, but I’m not a rapist.”

However, he also claimed in the podcast that during the trial he was overcome by “thrills of possible prison”.

Following the public backlash in 2014, Chow apologized to anyone who “thought these stories were true” and clarified that the podcast was meant to be “a dark, tasteless, totally disrespectful show where we fuck everyone who listens.”

“I am not a rapist. I hate rapists and think they should be raped and killed. I am an artist and storyteller and I see my DVDASA show as an extension of that art. If I’m guilty of anything, it’s bad storytelling,” Chow said in 2014.

However, the statement did not satisfy her biggest critics, who insisted that Chow was promoting rape culture by shaming the victim and normalizing sexual violence. Three years later, the actor was still responding to the backlash, releasing a second statement in 2017.

“I apologize for any hurt I may have caused with my past words. Sex without consent is rape, and it is inappropriate to joke about it. I was at the height of my mental illness and spent the last 3 years in a mental institution healing myself and dedicating my life to helping and healing others through love and action,” Chow said in 2017.

The actor is currently defending himself through the use of copyright infringement complaints. He sent the application not only to Twitter, but also to Google (one user shared a clip from his own Google Drive folder). And it appears that the second company also complied with Chow’s demands — the file is not available for viewing. The actor also appears to have taken to TikTok, leading to the audio being removed from the clip in at least one instance.