APIcalypse Now: Redefining data access regimes in the face of the Digital Services Act

The rise of restrictive data access policies, commonly referred to as the APIcalypse, has significantly impacted researchers' ability to collect and analyse data from social media platforms. The Digital Methods Initiative Winter School 2024 project, 'APIcalpyse NOW' centred these challenges, examining the evolving landscape of data access in the context of the forthcoming Digital Services Act (DSA), in particularly Article 40 which outlines the procedures and restrictions for vetted researchers to access platform data for research purposes, ensuring compliance with legal and ethical standards. This post highlights the main takeaways from the research and provides insights for academics across various fields. At the time of writing, Article 40 was not yet enforced, thus the object of study was the access opened up voluntarily by the platforms themselves to researchers, in anticipation of the DSA.