The Data Divide: How Social Media's Black Box Policies Threaten Research In the wake of high profile election interference cases, researchers have been seeking access to social media data to study online disinformation campaigns.
However, despite the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), platforms like TikTok are erecting barriers to data access.
Adriana Iamnitchi, chair of computational social sciences at Maastricht University, applied for access to TikTok's API under the DSA in October 2025.