Policy Approaches to Addressing Data Access Challenges in the Evolving Online Ecosystem

The document identifies technological, ethical, legal, and fragmentation barriers that inhibit public interest research on smaller and medium-sized platforms. It argues that current regulatory frameworks, such as the EU's Digital Services Act, primarily target very large platforms, leaving a gap in oversight for smaller platforms that may still pose significant risks. The author provides recommendations for platforms to standardize data access, for policy-makers to introduce legal 'safe harbours' for researchers, and for the research community to collaborate on tools and ethical frameworks.

• Researchers face three primary categories of barriers when studying harmful online activity: technological (e.g., encryption, blockchain), ethical/legal (e.g., privacy expectations, Terms of Service), and fragmentation (e.g., content that is public but not systematically searchable via API).
• Case studies of Telegram, Discord, and Odysee show that these barriers often overlap, forcing researchers to make trade-offs between systematic evidence collection and the avoidance of legal or ethical risks.
• The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) requires 'very large online platforms' (VLOPs) with 45 million or more monthly active users to provide real-time data access, but this threshold likely excludes the smaller and medium-sized platforms that are increasingly used by extremist actors.
• Proposed US legislation, including the Platform Transparency and Accountability Act (PATA), the Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act (DSOSA), and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), generally use user thresholds that would exclude many small platforms, though some may capture medium-sized ones like Telegram or Discord.
• The UK's Online Safety Bill (OSB) lacks clear, enforceable data access requirements for researchers, though its broader definition of in-scope services based on risk and functionality rather than strict user numbers offers potential future flexibility.
• In Australia, the Online Safety Act provides the eSafety Commissioner with powers to issue transparency notices, but it lacks broader mechanisms to increase data access for independent research.
• Platforms may deliberately use legal or ethical concerns, such as data protection or user privacy, to justify restricting researcher access even when users have consented to data sharing.
• The lack of consistent standards for data access can lead researchers to use deceptive methods or third-party tools that violate Terms of Service, which in turn disincentivizes the publication of work and harms the replicability of research.

APA

Tuck, H. (2023). Policy Approaches to Addressing Data Access Challenges in the Evolving Online Ecosystem. Institute for Strategic Dialogue. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Policy-Approaches-to-Addressing-Data-Access-Challenges-in-the-Evolving-Online-Ecosystem.pdf

Chicago

Tuck, Henry. Policy Approaches to Addressing Data Access Challenges in the Evolving Online Ecosystem. Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2023. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Policy-Approaches-to-Addressing-Data-Access-Challenges-in-the-Evolving-Online-Ecosystem.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Tuck |first1=Henry |title=Policy Approaches to Addressing Data Access Challenges in the Evolving Online Ecosystem |publisher=Institute for Strategic Dialogue |date=2023 |url=https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Policy-Approaches-to-Addressing-Data-Access-Challenges-in-the-Evolving-Online-Ecosystem.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{tuck2023policy, author = {Tuck, Henry}, title = {{Policy Approaches to Addressing Data Access Challenges in the Evolving Online Ecosystem}}, institution = {Institute for Strategic Dialogue}, year = {2023}, url = {https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Policy-Approaches-to-Addressing-Data-Access-Challenges-in-the-Evolving-Online-Ecosystem.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }