In Romania’s 2024 presidential election, TikTok’s data denied a research team vital insights into disinformation campaigns. Chair of computational social sciences Adriana Iamnitchi applied under the EU’s Digital Services Act but faced denials over security and commercial interests.

While TikTok eventually flagged suspicious accounts, Iamnitchi believes her team might have uncovered more about hidden influencer marketing. She laments: “The past years for social media research have been tough.”

Duncan Allen from Democracy Reporting International highlights that access tools like Meta’s CrowdTangle are now paywalled or replaced with content libraries, forcing academics to shell out hundreds of dollars a month.

Researchers face obstacles in obtaining API data, with varying approval rates and narrow interpretations of what qualifies as a systemic risk. Universities lack the necessary infrastructure to meet security requirements, and reproducibility is a challenge when data can’t be independently verified.