Standup comedian Manjeet Sarkar has accused an unnamed “billion dollar brand” of targeting him with a defamation lawsuit and copyright strikes for a news-based joke. Sarkar took to Instagram yesterday to share his account of how the brand had made his Instagram account suffer after being offended by a joke, and claimed that his account had been “shadow-banned” due to a copyright strike.

According to Sarkar, he was first served a legal notice for defamation, in response to which he archived the video containing the joke. But he refused to apologise for the joke, after which the brand allegedly reported one of his reels for copyright infringement. “Now my Instagram account is shadow-banned,” Sarkar wrote. “Growth slowed. Views dipped. All because someone at their PR office has a fragile ego.”

A defiant Sarkar promised the company that he wouldn’t use their brand again (“because no one was using it anyway”), before adding “I’m not going anywhere. The jokes will only get louder […] I am shadow-banned but not silenced. And for that guy—still f**ck you.”