The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the year’s biggest film, taking in over $1 billion at the box office. But if you haven’t been able to get to the theater or just didn’t want to, you could have watched it on Twitter this past weekend.
A pirated stream of the 92-minute film appeared on the social media site Friday afternoon, amassing at least 9.3 million views before it was taken down on Sunday, according to screenshots posted by The Verge. The accounts posting the film have since been suspended for violating Twitter’s rules.
Avatar: The Way of Water was also reportedly posted on the site, though it’s unclear how many people watched that (three-hour) film before it was pulled down.
The posts follow Elon Musk’s firing of the majority of Twitter’s trust and safety and compliance teams in the wake of his takeover of the social media company. Musk also extended the length of videos people could post from 140 seconds to 60 minutes (in 1080p high definition).
At the time of the layoffs, one of the contract moderators who was dismissed said, “I love the platform, and I really enjoyed working at the company and trying to make it better. And I’m just really fearful of what’s going to slip through the cracks.”
A request for comment to Twitter resulted in the standard reply from its media department: the poop emoji.
Streaming has become an increasingly popular method for pirates of entertainment titles, versus download sites, like the infamous Pirate Bay. Globally, piracy is estimated to cost the entertainment industry $71 billion per year and has exploded in recent years.
Ten years ago, the Motion Picture Association only faced about 24 anti-piracy cases per year. These days, it handles that many in a week.
