Researchers across Europe thought the Digital Services Act would open doors. Instead they slam into walls. Platforms like TikTok, X and Meta stand accused of blocking, delaying or watering down the very data that could expose how their systems fuel disinformation, addiction and harm.
The complaints come as the EU tries to turn lofty regulation into practice. Two years after key parts of the DSA took effect, academics report narrow interpretations of what counts as a systemic risk, impossible security demands and data that arrives too late or too incomplete to be useful. But the Commission shows signs of pushing back. It has already fined X €120 million and accepted an action plan from the company to fix researcher access issues.
Consider Adriana Iamnitchi. The chair of computational social sciences at Maastricht University wanted to examine how hidden influencer networks and livestreams monetized pro-Calin Georgescu content on TikTok ahead of Romania’s chaotic 2024 presidential election. Georgescu’s posts racked up 120 million views. His surprise first-round win triggered investigations, annulled results and claims of foreign interference.
Iamnitchi applied for API access under the DSA on October 28, 2025. TikTok turned her down. The company said her team failed to prove established researcher status, explain commercial interests or satisfy security rules. She detailed the rejection in a blog post. Months later TikTok itself identified and acted against a coordinated fake-engagement network pushing Georgescu content. The episode left Iamnitchi convinced that timely data access could have revealed who profited from the campaign.
“If you are a scholar interested in how social media shapes society, the past years have been tough,” she wrote. “When you need data to investigate that impact, and that data is privately held, it can become practically impossible to research this space.”
Her experience fits a pattern. Duncan Allen, a research officer at Democracy Reporting International in Germany, has watched public tools disappear. Meta shuttered CrowdTangle. X put its API behind steep paywalls. TikTok limits daily pulls. Without reliable access, Allen says, society stays blind to how platforms recommend content or handle reports of illegal material. “Black holes” in knowledge keep growing.
The DSA promised to change that. Article 40 gives vetted researchers the right to public data without undue delay. A separate provision opens non-public data such as exposure logs, moderation records and recommendation algorithms when linked to systemic risks. Applications flow through national Digital Services Coordinators. The goal is evidence-based oversight rather than corporate self-reporting.
Reality has proved messier. An initiative called the DSA40 Collaboratory tracks applications. Of 46 logged so far, 20 won approval and 14 faced rejection. Rates swing dramatically. TikTok approved 11 of 13. X rejected 11 of 23. These numbers come from voluntary reporting, so the true picture may look worse, according to L.K. Seiling, who coordinates the project.
“Data access as it’s set up right now tries to disincentivize researchers,” Seiling said. Forms differ by company. Many demand storage on air-gapped machines that universities rarely possess. Even approved data can prove hard to reproduce, undermining basic scientific standards.
Platforms defend their records. A TikTok spokesperson pointed to more than 1,500 research teams granted tool access overall and 130 EU approvals in the second half of last year. Researchers can pull up to 100,000 video and comment records daily under current quotas, the company said. It considers its offerings compliant but would welcome clearer public guidance from Brussels.
Meta offered a similar defense. Its Content Library and API replaced CrowdTangle with what the company calls the most comprehensive research tools yet. They span Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Channels and Threads while adding privacy safeguards. Qualified nonprofits and journalists may apply.
Yet researchers describe workarounds that feel inadequate. Scraping public interfaces takes time and misses key signals such as full follower lists. Mapping coordinated networks becomes guesswork. Some groups turn to court. Democracy Reporting International and the Society for Civil Rights sued X after repeated rejections. A German court sided with them in one case tied to political discourse before elections. Another nearly collapsed over jurisdictional fights between Berlin and Ireland, where X maintains its EU base.
“EU law is still not uniformly applied,” Allen said. “It’s cost us a lot of time and energy, and there is an ongoing calculus of whether or not it’s worth having these lawsuits every time we apply for data access.”
The Commission has taken notice. In December 2025 it issued its first major DSA fine against X. Part of the €120 million penalty targeted “unnecessary barriers” to researcher access that undermined studies of risks inside the EU. X appealed in February 2026, labeling the probe incomplete and procedurally flawed. Last week the Commission accepted X’s action plan. The company must streamline vetting, provide data at no charge, shorten processing times and ease scraping limits. Implementation must occur within six months.
Allen called the plan a step forward but wants specifics on how vetting will improve. Skepticism lingers. Meanwhile the Commission and national coordinators held a roundtable on May 19, 2026 with very large online platforms. As of that date, Digital Services Coordinators had received 49 applications. Most targeted social media platforms. Topics ranged from illegal content spread and advertising transparency to AI features in recommendation systems.
The European Commission has opened proceedings against several firms and continues to monitor compliance closely. Jakob Ohme and L.K. Seiling examined these early struggles in a paper published in Political Communication. They describe Article 40 as a shift from corporate discretion to regulated public-interest research. Yet implementation reveals uneven compliance, uncertain technical standards, funding paradoxes and limits on data sharing for replication.
Platforms sometimes apply narrow definitions of systemic risk. They may exclude certain civil-society researchers or deliver incomplete datasets. Non-public data access under Article 40(4) only began processing applications in late 2025. The full cycle can stretch nine months. Researchers remain cautiously optimistic that these pathways will eventually deliver exposure logs and moderation metrics now hidden from view.
Recent coverage highlights the stakes. A July 2026 report from TechBuzz notes that legal experts view the delays as a deliberate strategy to test EU enforcement limits while slow-walking compliance. An academic analysis on arXiv from earlier this year found industry ties heavily influence published social media research, with Meta and Google funding appearing in a notable share of papers. Such connections raise questions about who sets the research agenda when independent access stays blocked.
And the clock keeps ticking. Romania’s election fallout showed how quickly coordinated campaigns can move. Researchers who could have mapped monetization paths in real time were left watching from the sidelines. Similar gaps appear in studies of addictive design, election interference and mental health impacts on young users. The Commission has already found Meta’s Instagram and Facebook interfaces may breach DSA rules on addictive design.
So the tension builds. Platforms insist they provide more data than ever. Researchers counter that the offerings fall short of legal obligations and scientific needs. Regulators sit in the middle, opening proceedings, accepting action plans and promising guidance. Whether the DSA ultimately forces meaningful transparency or simply generates more litigation remains an open question.
One thing looks clear. Without reliable, timely data, Europe cannot fully understand the systems that now shape public debate, personal well-being and democratic choice. The researchers keep applying. The platforms keep responding. And the Commission keeps watching. The next few months of implementation will test whether the law’s ambition survives contact with commercial incentives.
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