European researchers say DSA researcher data access, the EU’s answer to platform black boxes, is still failing in practice. Academics and civil-society researchers told WIRED they remain blocked by rejections, security demands, rate limits and litigation when trying to study how TikTok, X and Meta shape political information.
The problem is not theoretical. In the final weeks before Romania’s November 2024 presidential vote, TikTok accounts that had long posted about fashion or manicures began promoting Calin Georgescu, a little-known candidate whose posts included hard-line immigration views and anti-Semitic tropes. His posts were viewed 120 million times before the vote, and Georgescu won the first round with 23 percent after previously polling in the single digits.
Adriana Iamnitchi, chair of computational social sciences at Maastricht University, wanted to examine whether pro-Georgescu content was being monetized through hidden influencer marketing and livestreamed political content. In a blog post, she wrote that her team applied for TikTok API access under the Digital Services Act and was rejected. TikTok said the researchers had not shown they were established researchers, had not explained commercial interests and had not met security requirements, according to Iamnitchi.
TikTok later said it flagged 116,000 accounts as potentially compromised and acted against more than 27,000 fake accounts in a coordinated network run by a third-party “fake engagement vendor” promoting Georgescu and the Alliance for the Union of Romanians. TikTok said it did not know who ran the network or where it came from. Declassified Romanian intelligence said Georgescu “benefited” from large exposure and preferential treatment on TikTok, and alleged Russia coordinated the online campaign.
What is DSA researcher data access?
The Digital Services Act allows vetted researchers at credible institutions to request platform data when their work studies systemic risks, including illegal content, threats to fundamental rights and recommender systems. An API, or application programming interface, is the structured pipe researchers use to pull platform records at scale instead of clicking around like interns with infinite coffee.
Researchers told WIRED the pipe is often narrow, delayed or shut. Duncan Allen, a research officer at Democracy Reporting International in Germany, said X’s API charges have forced academics to pay “hundreds of dollars a month.” TikTok caps how much a researcher account can pull each day, which Allen said can make large-scale research impossible.
Security rules are another choke point. Iamnitchi said many platform forms require data storage on infrastructure that cannot be compromised, such as a machine physically disconnected from the internet, which many universities do not have. L. K. Seiling, coordinator of the DSA40 Collaboratory, said approval does not guarantee useful data, and Iamnitchi said API outputs can be hard for other researchers to reproduce, which undermines error-checking.
DSA40 Collaboratory data tracks 46 applications: 20 approved and 14 rejected. TikTok approved 11 of 13 tracked applications, while X rejected 11 of 23. Seiling said the real rejection rate is likely higher because the tracker depends on voluntary reporting, and said the current system disincentivizes researchers.
TikTok told WIRED it has given more than 1,500 research teams access to its tools, approved 130 EU applications in the second half of last year and allows up to 1,000 API requests per day, which it said can return up to 100,000 video and comment records or 2 million follower records. Meta told WIRED its Meta Content Library and API are its most comprehensive research tools and cover Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Channels and Threads with privacy protections.
Some researchers scrape public pages where platforms allow it, but Allen said scraping is incomplete and cannot capture full follower lists, making coordinated networks harder to map. DRI and the Society for Civil Rights sued X after it rejected access for German election research; a court ruled X should have granted access. DRI later won an appeal in a Hungary-related access case after a Berlin court initially said the lawsuit belonged in Ireland, where X is based.
The European Commission fined X €120 million, or $137 million, in December 2025, partly over barriers to researcher access. X appealed on February 20, 2026, calling the investigation incomplete and accusing the EU of due-process failures. The commission later accepted X’s plan to fix researcher screening, provide data free of charge, shorten processing times and lift scraping restrictions, giving X six months to implement the changes.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
