Twitter has stopped sharing reports of external content takedown requests it receives with the Lumen database since April 15 as the social media platform is currently reviewing its third-party data-sharing policies, Lumen said on Twitter. https://twitter.com/lumendatabase/status/1651578251599310849?s=20 Lumen is a project started by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and it aggregates external requests, such as legal notices and government orders, sent to online platforms directing them to remove content. The database receives this information from the participating platforms, which include Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Medium, Vimeo, etc. "Our goals are to facilitate research about the different kinds of complaints and requests for removal--both legitimate and questionable--that are being sent to Internet publishers, search engines, and service providers, and to provide as much transparency as possible about the 'ecology' of such notices, in terms of who is sending them and why, and to what effect." — Lumen website Why does this matter: Lumen has been an invaluable resource for researchers and journalists studying the freedom of speech online. We at MediaNama have used it extensively in our reporting of content takedowns ordered by the Indian government. For India, Lumen is all the more vital because Section 69A orders, which are the orders issued by the government to direct content takedowns, are confidential in nature. Consequently, we have to rely on platforms sharing details of the orders with Lumen to understand why a piece of content was taken down. Ironically, Twitter has stopped sharing details with Lumen when it's…
