European researchers are facing significant hurdles in accessing vital social media data needed to study online disinformation and its societal impact, despite new EU regulations designed to provide such access. Platforms like TikTok and X are accused of creating obstacles, leading to frustration and legal battles for academics attempting to investigate critical issues like election interference and the spread of harmful content.
The challenge came into sharp focus during Romania's 2024 presidential election. TikTok accounts, previously focused on lifestyle content, began promoting a little-known politician, Calin Georgescu, with hard-line views. These posts garnered 120 million views, contributing to Georgescu's unexpected first-round win. Adriana Iamnitchi, a computational social science chair at Maastricht University, sought to analyze how this content was monetized and spread, but her team's application for TikTok's API under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) was denied, citing insufficient proof of researcher status and unmet security requirements.
Despite the platform's claims of not knowing the network's origin, TikTok later flagged a large number of accounts as compromised and removed over 27,000 fake accounts linked to a coordinated network promoting Georgescu and his party. Declassified Romanian intelligence suggested Georgescu benefited from preferential treatment on TikTok, with alleged Russian coordination of the online campaign. Iamnitchi believes that with API access, her team could have identified those profiting from the pro-Georgescu content, highlighting a critical gap in understanding how social media shapes public discourse.
This situation is not isolated. Multiple misinformation researchers have reported facing obstacles, obfuscation, and even legal challenges in obtaining platform data, even when legally entitled under EU law. The DSA was intended to improve researcher access, but implementation issues persist. Companies have shut down public tools like Meta's CrowdTangle, replaced them with content libraries, or paywalled API data, imposing substantial costs on academics. Researchers argue that without proper API access, crucial insights into platform algorithms and content moderation remain "black holes."
Platforms often impose strict security requirements for data storage, demanding infrastructure that many universities lack. Even when applications are approved, the data quality and reproducibility can be problematic, hindering the scientific process. While TikTok claims to have granted access to numerous research teams, and Meta offers comprehensive content libraries, researchers contend that current implementations, including daily quotas on API requests and narrow interpretations of "systemic risks," severely limit the scale and depth of their investigations.
Legal challenges are becoming a recourse. The Democracy Reporting International (DRI) sued X after its API access request was denied, securing a ruling that X should have granted access, potentially setting a precedent. However, such legal battles are costly and time-consuming, with varying interpretations of EU law across member states. The European Commission has fined X for creating "unnecessary barriers" to researcher access, and while X has proposed an action plan to improve the process, skepticism remains about its effective implementation.
The European Commission is working on new standards for vetting researchers and has expanded access to nonpublic platform data for studying risks like illegal content and financial scams. These new provisions, though yet to be fully tested, offer a cautious optimism, potentially enabling researchers to better map the spread of disinformation by understanding account interactions and content amplification.
