Investigative report on reputation management highlights continued abuse of copyright and other laws to manipulate online media

Earlier this week, on February 17 2023, an investigative news report about Eliminalia, a Spanish reputation management firm made headlines. The leaked documents in the report revealed that Eliminalia “worked for scammers, spyware companies, torturers, convicted criminals and others in the global underworld to hide public-interest information” under the guise of being a service that claimed “to remove unwanted and erroneous information” for clients.

Notice in Lumen reveals Indian Government’s attempt to remove references to BBC’s documentary titled ‘India: The Modi Question’

A notice contributed to Lumen by Twitter as a part of Twitter’s transparency efforts revealed that on January 21, 2023, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting sent Twitter an online content blocking order requiring the removal of fifty tweets that discuss ‘India: The Modi Question’, BBC’s recent documentary critical of PM Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat communal riots, where more than 1000 people were killed. Twitter has withheld the tweets in India in response to this request. The order includes tweets made by multiple members of the Indian Parliament, journalists and news channels.

Stark increase in government takedown requests in Lumen

In the last few years, journalists, activists, and civil society members have noted that authoritarian national governments are increasingly relying on digital tools to control what information is available to their citizens online. The weaponization of government takedown requests has become a key strategy to meet this goal. Government takedown requests are a legitimate tool for removing illegal online content such as hate speech and terrorist content, but are increasingly being misused to remove lawful government criticism or other types of information that conflict with a governments’ preferred narrative. Some of the most telling evidence of this trend of increasing misuse of government takedown requests has surfaced as a result of Online Service Providers (OSPs), most notably Twitter and Google, being transparent about what information governments have asked them to remove from their services by sharing copies of the governments’ requests and demands with the Lumen database.

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Click here to read about Lumen's Spring 2022 Research Sprint -- "Takedowns and Transparency Research Sprint: Global Norms, Regulation and the Nature of Online Information