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German civil activists win victory in election case against X

• _trampeltier 2y ago
  "Other platforms have granted us access to systematically track public debates on their platforms, but X has refused to do so," said DRI's Michael Meyer-Resende in a statement on Wednesday, announcing the lawsuit. What others share just info for free?
  • cess11 2y ago
    Perhaps there are fees involved, perhaps not, but yes, they do election monitoring on other services: https://democracy-reporting.org/en/office/global/collection?tag=social-media-monitoring https://democracy-reporting.org/en/office/global/collection?... Here's the press release TFA is based on: https://democracy-reporting.org/en/office/EU/news/court-orders-x-to-allow-our-research-on-the-german-elections https://democracy-reporting.org/en/office/EU/news/court-orde...
  • warkdarrior 2y ago
    Facebook has its Researcher Platform for vetted academics: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/researcher-platform/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/researcher-platform/
  • throwaway_20357 2y ago
    There is also the Meta Content Library and API (https://transparency.meta.com/en-gb/researchtools/meta-content-library/ https://transparency.meta.com/en-gb/researchtools/meta-conte...) although that seems to contain only a subset of the data.
  • ben_w 2y ago
    > What others share just info for free? Given it's a legal obligation? The ones whose boss isn't personally interfering with a foreign election.
    • ivewonyoung 2y ago
      Where can we download that data you're referring to?
      • protimewaster 2y ago
        I assume it varies by platform. Meta has a service that makes data available to vetted academic researchers, for example, so keep in mind that "available to researchers" does not necessarily mean that one can just post a link to it on Hacker News. If there's a specific platform you're thinking of, there's probably someone in here that can direct you to the right place. What platform are you thinking of?
      • pavlov 2y ago
        Meta provides data to qualified researchers, which seems to satisfy the European law.
• black_puppydog 2y ago
  I mean, it's great to get some stuff on the record (and as a German myself I see our courts as one of the stronger checks on power in general, they've been imperfect but overall pretty reliable). But I'm not sure what the researchers are trying to find that's not already in plain sight. By now it's pretty clear that the network is actively driving discourse in one specific direction. And with Musk's involvement in the US admin, it's even more officially a non-friendly foreign actor than tiktok is.
  • jampekka 2y ago
    > By now it's pretty clear that the network is actively driving discourse in one specific direction. Research is exactly about not just taking a look and declaring something "pretty clear". Also what "a direction" is not clear, or the dynamics of what affects the direction etc.
    • tyre 2y ago
      It’s pretty clear. There were a few shifts that happened: 1. Musk bought twitter 2. Musk, despite being the wealthiest person on earth and running companies that are genuinely fascinating, has nonetheless—against overwhelming odds—been considered a loser. 3. Because of (2) and his fragile ego (part of the reason he was widely considered a loser in the pre-Musk dominant circles) he went hard to the right. Petty grievances, anti-free speech, “burn it down”, etc. 4. Twitter made changes under Musk that compensated large accounts based on the number of views or engagements. Effectively a rev share for ad spend 5. Because Musk can massively amplify content and has a fragile ego, aligning yourself with Musk’s pet issues directly affects income for influencers. Accounts in the other direction can be demonetized and deprioritized on feeds. This has led to large accounts, in the run up to the election, being very vocally trump even when they’ve had publicly leftist leanings in the past. It wasn’t a shift in policy positions. It was a shift to ragebait and memes that were more likely to get Elon’s attention and retweets. So it is both pretty clear and a result of active decisions in one specific direction. We don’t need a multi-year quintuple blind study by esteemed Ivy League research fellows to do the basic observation and deduction of the situation.
• juancn 2y ago
  From TFA: X had not responded to a court request for information, the court added, ordering the company to bear the 6,000 euro ($6,200) cost of proceedings. This looks like a Pyrrhic victory to me.
  • ffsm8 2y ago
    I think you're interpreting that that's the only outcome? In Germany it's much harder to get money via lawsuit (vs the US), so that's kinda normal. If Twitter doesn't comply, the Staatsanwaltschaft will open a new lawsuit which will have a much bigger fine. but yeah - 6k lawyers fee sounds like a joke, I guess it was a slam dunk case with very little time on the clock for the lawyers.
    • juancn 2y ago
      They just need to delay until after the elections and then pay the fine.
    • croemer 2y ago
      No, not Staatsanwaltschaft (public prosecutor). This is a private suit. Plaintiff can get some sort of injunction next, I presume.
      • microtonal 2y ago
        Couldn't the violation of the DSA also lead to prosecution at the EU level?
        • croemer 2y ago
          Yep, it does! See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_3761 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
      • ffsm8 2y ago
        Not directly, yeh. I just skipped to the logical conclusion if they keep ignoring the ruling indefinitely. But definitely not something that's going to happen within the next weeks, sorry if I made it sound like that.
• lysace 2y ago
  Thinking about the probable next steps made me remember that time Germany temporarily prohibited wikipedia.de from pointing to the actual Wikipedia when an article there said that the German politician Lutz Heilmann had been a full-time Stasi (the infamous and insanely brutal secret police) employee in the former DDR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia#German... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutz_Heilmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutz_Heilmann
  • throwaway_20357 2y ago
    That was in 2008. The block lasted 2 days (https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/lawmaker-apologizes-for-blocking-wikipedia-idUSTRE4AI7NB/ https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/lawmaker-apologize...).
    • 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
      That’s still an eternity for such a valuable resource.
      • duskwuff 2y ago
        This didn't impede access to Wikipedia (de.wikipedia.org), just the stub web site (which may have been a redirect at that time?) at wikipedia.de.
        • lysace 2y ago
          wikipedia.de was the locally known/marketed (by Wikimedia Deutschland) entry point.
  • chihuahua 2y ago
    Interesting that a single cranky ex-Stasi employee can block Wikipedia for all of Germany because he's mad that Wikipedia states the proven fact that he is a former Stasi employee. Do German courts not review the facts before granting injunctions?
• efitz 2y ago
  Germany (and the entire EU) are complete hypocrites about data privacy. “Privacy for me, but not for thee” appears to be the operative principle. And it’s completely random. Transnational businesses have to expend enormous time and effort complying with privacy, right to be forgotten, data sovereignty, GDPR, etc. and then random courts and bureaucratic agency rulings carve out exceptions wherever they feel like. I’m not excusing X for failing to respond to a court order, I’m just pointing out that the order itself was ad hoc and inconsistent like many others.
  • gspencley 2y ago
    I also don't like this ruling from a moral point of view. I know others may disagree with me, because we obviously all value scientific research here and a lot of us don't really like social media in general, but the fact that you want to research something and that the results of that research will have value to others doesn't entitle you to someone else's services. I might encourage X to volunteer this data, to the extent that things like privacy can be safe-guarded etc. But force them to with the strong arm of the law? No thanks. There's no rights basis here. We could benefit from the results of the research, for sure, but I don't think anyone has a right to the data other than those who produced it (individual users with respects to their personal data + X itself).
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • AlotOfReading 2y ago
      Leaving aside the specifics of this situation and the implementation difficulties, a corporate FOIA where legitimate researchers (and others like journalists) could get reasonable, vetted access to data sounds fantastic. It'd be great to know what criteria your insurance used to determine appropriate rate increases, or the history of food safety failures at the slaughterhouse that produced the meat at the grocery store. Why would you take a moral stance against that (as opposed to the obvious practical stance against it)?
      • 2y ago
• tiahura 2y ago
  It’s refreshing to have a president that won’t standby while American companies are routinely harassed by Europeon bureaucrats. They’re going to find that Europe is much more dependent on access to US markets than vice versa. I would imagine top folks at LVMH and VW have to recognize the perilous course their governments have taken.
  • vtashkov 2y ago
    [dead]
• fred_is_fred 2y ago
  How is Germany going to enforce this? President Musk doesn't seem to be subject to any laws to me.
  • 1234letshaveatw 2y ago
    sigh- I wish we could go back to the heady days of the Biden presidency when everyone knew who had their hands on the wheel
    • djkivi 2y ago
      It was the person inside the Easter Bunny costume, right?
    • robertlagrant 2y ago
      Sadly the wheel was not attached to the car. But we knew who was holding it!
  • swarnie 2y ago
    He's not subject to your laws, the EU isn't a state of your union.
    • fred_is_fred 2y ago
      He's not subject to any law that I can see. Hence my question, what will EU courts do here? Elon does not care what any courts or governments have told him so far. In the end I think he will threaten something with his German factories and everyone will back down. He's not going to get arrested or anything.
      • robertlagrant 2y ago
        Why would he get arrested for not providing easier access to data they can already access?
  • cocodill 2y ago
    how about "in no way"?
• mmooss 2y ago
  Into the 1920s and early 1930s, Germany seems to have been a/the center of research, culture, etc. The rise of the Nazis shut down research that conflicted with their political goals and researchers left for free countries, especially the US. The US, perhaps the only wealthy place on earth after WWII - it devastated Europe - has been the center of research and culture since then. Now in the US, right-wing powers have campaigned to shut down disinformation research, often via lawfare and apparently via influence on major universities. Also, the Trump administration has made clear it is against much scientific research, especially when results conflict with political goals, and has already interfered in significant ways with research (and also culture). I think the Trump administration would agree with that description. There's no war yet that will devastate the US economically, but the Trump administration is willing to risk that. Even without a war, it's not hard to imagine disinformation researchers moving to Europe now, and also scientists and also artists generally. Again, I think the Trump administration would endorse that.
  • esbranson 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • OKRainbowKid 2y ago
      Germany is a federation of states, too.
      • esbranson 2y ago
        Touché. I should've said free and independent states, which is the along the lines of the typical verbiage used by US states. It was also in the context of who controls universities, which in the context of Nazi Germany, was likely Germany.
    • myvoiceismypass 2y ago
      Vietnam invigorated the US economy? The twenty year Afghanistan War too?
  • ANewFormation 2y ago
• blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  > The GFF and Democracy Reporting International had argued that X had a duty under European law to provide easily researchable, collated access to information such as post reach, shares and likes - information theoretically available by laboriously clicking through thousands of posts but in practice impossible to access. What law requires this? That data seems interesting, but it also seems odd to require a private platform to provide it. Is this directly legislated in the EU, or is this some kind of technicality?
  • germanier 2y ago
    It's clearly in the spirit of the law, namely Article 40 section 12 of the EU Digital Services Act: > Providers of very large online platforms or of very large online search engines shall give access without undue delay to data, including, where technically possible, to real-time data, provided that the data is publicly accessible in their online interface by researchers, including those affiliated to not for profit bodies, organisations and associations, who comply with the conditions set out in paragraph 8, points (b), (c), (d) and (e), and who use the data solely for performing research that contributes to the detection, identification and understanding of systemic risks in the Union pursuant to Article 34(1).
  • croemer 2y ago
    See: https://algorithmic-transparency.ec.europa.eu/news/faqs-dsa-data-access-researchers-2023-12-13_en https://algorithmic-transparency.ec.europa.eu/news/faqs-dsa-...
• hereme888 2y ago
  Why would a private US company be ordered to provide anything to researchers just because others do it? What's the logic behind this?
  • elashri 2y ago
    It is called following local laws if you want to operate in the market under the jurisdiction of these local laws. You are free to not comply and then they are free to prevent you from operating. It is the same like individuals visiting/moving to this place. Being private/public company does not grant you immunity.
    • dmitrygr 2y ago
      So, if X does nothing, will Germany write and enforce laws to demand all ISPs block x.com?
      • mmarq 2y ago
        It doesn't need to write new laws, they already exist and they are already enforced. Try to access an illegal online casino from Italy, for example.
      • croemer 2y ago
        No, but plaintiff can ask for an injunction, and X may have to pay a fine.
      • layer8 2y ago
        Brazil did that, so why not.
      • immibis 2y ago
        If that happens, it won't be a law, but a court-ordered punishment intended to force compliance. It seems that courts are allowed to do a lot of things to force people to comply with their orders. Up to and including imprisonment. Punishments given for this purpose apparently go away as soon as compliance happens. And this is a general principle, not just in Germany. Germany probably already has a system for the government to order ISPs to block certain domains. It would be surprising if any overbearing surveillance state didn't.
• qwertox 2y ago
  > At the heart of this case was the enforcement of a new legal provision under the DSA: the right to access research data (Article 40(12) DSA). This provision requires large online platforms to provide researchers with immediate access to publicly available data on their platforms in order to assess systemic risks. The lawsuit has also helped clarify open legal questions regarding the judicial enforceability of this right in Germany. [0] Why would anyone living in a democracy be against this? Also, maybe this linked article would be a better one that the one from Reuters. [0] https://democracy-reporting.org/en/office/EU/news/court-orders-x-to-allow-our-research-on-the-german-elections https://democracy-reporting.org/en/office/EU/news/court-orde...
  • aaron695 2y ago
    [dead]
  • easytiger 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • qwertox 2y ago
      The scope is limited to electoral debates. It's in the interest of the citizens.
      • dmix 2y ago
        This is giving random researchers ("including those affiliated with non-profit bodies, organizations, and associations") "unrestricted access to all publicly available data on the platform immediately after elections" as long as they are doing something with some connection to the election? Doesn't sound very limited in scope... just timing. There's tons of nefarious uses for data like that which is why social media APIs usually have limitations on how broad you can go.
        • croemer 2y ago
          Twitter gave researches good access. Then came Musk and shut that down. I don't think he did that because he worried about nefarious uses.
• sunshine-o 2y ago
  I still remember the time before the Internet, I can assure you the world was full of disinformation and misinformation, I believe way more than today. Everywhere, in schools, in cafes, the bus stop people would tell you crazy things and people would argue about whether it is true or not. If you really wanted to settle it you would need to find an encyclopedia, but most of the time you would need to go to a public library and find a book or go through microfilms for hours, make a copy and show it to everybody to fight disinformation. Depending on the country, the government had a tight or tighter control on what was in that library. Some country would also tightly control what was said in a bar or cafe like in East Germany. So thinking we are in a life threatening misinformation epidemic is just false if you compare to just a few decades ago.
  • sgt 2y ago
    Yeah, and remember when some adults (otherwise normal people) argued that they had seen UFO's?
    • Fnoord 2y ago
      Kind of harmless conspiracy compared to many of the current ones.
      • dmix 2y ago
        There were plenty of Dale Gribbles in the world before social media. Movies and books were full of conspiracy stuff (see "Enemy of the State" from 1998), and the public believed lots of them to varying degrees. Overreacting to that by using government to silence/control them would surely only generate legions more and give them easy legitimacy as victims.
        • Fnoord 2y ago
          The existence of a fictional movie says nothing about how popular conspiracies are. I have seen a lot of dystopian movies and read such books, including cyberpunk. A Scanner Darkly, The Illuminatus Trilogy, The Matrix, Snow Crash, Dune, eXistenz, just name some random ones. I'll mention four series, too: Twin Peaks, X-Files, Utopia, Nikita. That doesn't make me a conspiracy nut, because I am able to differentiate between fiction and non-fiction. The trouble from 80's is different. We've shifted power vacuum, but whilst doing so the rich have become very much more rich, and [generally] they don't want to take responsibility; they want raw power. Things like bullshit (lies, conspiracies, manipulation), drama (such as creating friction between poor and middle class), obliteration of facts and science, cryptocurrency to avoid sanctions and law, and criminal behavior (including methods to avoid paying tax) are each tools for achieving more of such power. UFOs are one of such, too. They're a tool to accelerate the distrust in government. For the acronym UFO itself is broad. A meteorite or Starlink satellite could be mistaken for an alien spaceship. Furthermore, drugs, hallucination, psychosis and the power of suggestion alone are strong tools to feed such fables. I am well aware fans of conspiracies can very well be fans of X-Files but it is fiction first and foremost, plus don't forget Scully's role and background.
• krick 2y ago
  TBH, while I would like Twitter to be obligated to provide access to any data to anyone, I don't really understand on what grounds the decision was made. I mean, I wouldn't ask, if it was an USA court, where it's considered normal that any stupid judge can make any stupid decision, and it is called a precedent and must be respected. But in Germany there are laws, right? At least, theoretically. I mean, I personally don't believe in that, but any court decision is supposed be almost a natural consequence of the existing laws. So what is the law that makes a company obligated to do some work for free and send your data to some "researchers"? Honestly, I just don't like how it sounds, I kinda prefer libertarian anarchy, unrestrained mayhem and total impunity of various Musks to that kind of stuff.
  • croemer 2y ago
    > I don't really understand on what grounds the decision was made. "The lawsuit is based on the Digital Services Act (DSA), which mandates platforms to provide researchers with access to relevant data." See: https://algorithmic-transparency.ec.europa.eu/news/faqs-dsa-data-access-researchers-2023-12-13_en https://algorithmic-transparency.ec.europa.eu/news/faqs-dsa-... It's based on EU law.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• jonas21 2y ago
  I thought we decided giving researchers access to social network data was a bad thing after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
  • Cumpiler69 2y ago
    These researchers are on the side of the government.
    • personomas 2y ago
      [dead]
    • explain 2y ago
      Even worse.
    • croemer 2y ago
      That's not at all true. This has nothing to do with the government. It's a court ruling on a law passed by parliament. In no way was the opinion/side of government at play here.
  • hwillis 2y ago
    Cambridge analytica had all data associated with real names, and it included all your likes and even some people's private messaging. Yes, anonymized research data is very different.
    • Amezarak 2y ago
      It is basically impossible to have anonymized social media data that cannot be deanonymized which is also useful for anything but a very narrow kind of research.
  • johannes1234321 2y ago
    There is always a conflict, but only with access to the data you can uncover CA-style usage of the data.
  • deleted 2y ago
• srameshc 2y ago
  Righteously, the German government has the right to enforce the law and Elon will certainly now not like this government even more. That gives him more reasons to team up with the right wing to have his way in the world's third largest economy so he can run the world the way he likes it.
  • croemer 2y ago
    This ruling doesn't have the government as a party. It has nothing to do with the German government. The German judiciary, yes. German plaintiff, yes. But not the government. The law in question is an EU law: https://algorithmic-transparency.ec.europa.eu/news/faqs-dsa-data-access-researchers-2023-12-13_en https://algorithmic-transparency.ec.europa.eu/news/faqs-dsa-...
• jstummbillig 2y ago
  In this thread: An alarming number of people somehow perplexed by the concept of sovereign nations and local laws.
  • pembrook 2y ago
    Seems good that people would discuss and make value judgements on said policy. Europeans seem to have no trouble loudly voicing their opinion on American law, and I don't see Americans getting thin skin about it. Why should we operate under the assumption any policy implemented by any politician (German or otherwise) is inherently good by default? Specifically in the case of Germany, we have many recent and historical examples of not great ideas being implemented... Might be good to be willing to question these things instead of retorting "THE LAW IS THE LAW" and bowing to the overlords with the rubber stamps, no?
    • jstummbillig 2y ago
      I have no objections, but I don't see how it relates to my comment.
    • cmdli 2y ago
      People here aren't criticizing the policy, but the very idea that Germany is allowed to make said policy. Americans in this thread are absolutely getting thin skin about the idea that a US company has to follow German laws.
      • diggan 2y ago
        This sentiment been around for seemingly forever. I can still remember Americans arguing against AirBnb and Uber being banned for not following laws around the country, and somehow being surprised that they got fines for it.
        • pembrook 2y ago
          Thinking a law is dumb is not the same thing as “being surprised that there are laws.” The whole point of the Uber and Airbnb strategy was to force each market to re-evaluate whether long-standing laws (protecting special interests like the taxi lobby) were actually desirable by bringing legal challenges to them in each market after already winning the support of the people. They were largely successful at this. Most markets democratically voted to change previous laws. I know for people on the spectrum the idea of rules brings lots of comfort, but you do realize the whole point of a democracy is that rules can be debated and changed?
• croemer 2y ago
  Here are FAQs on the EU law that was applied here: https://algorithmic-transparency.ec.europa.eu/news/faqs-dsa-data-access-researchers-2023-12-13_en https://algorithmic-transparency.ec.europa.eu/news/faqs-dsa-...
• hnpolicestate 2y ago
  [flagged]
• iamacyborg 2y ago
  Everyone seems to be forgetting that the Mueller report was a thing and this type of research is fairly critical in ensuring there’s no foul play in elections from foreign interests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
  • Amezarak 2y ago
    Foreign interests are always interfering in US elections (and everyone else's too); that's the price of being a democracy. It's a tale as old as democracy itself. There are plenty of other notable examples in US history, but it's a constant, and efforts obviously only intensified in the post-war era as America became more important to everyone else. The example in 2016 of one particular country's actions is more about what the establishment chose to report for political reasons, although obviously there is some novelty in the way influence efforts are changing over time to adapt to new technologies.
    • iamacyborg 2y ago
      I think you’re brushing under the rug just how easy these efforts have become through modern social media platforms.
      • Amezarak 2y ago
        I don't think the ease really matters when we're talking about nation-states who look at the outcome of US elections as having a major impact on their country's future. Ease matters for regular people. Nation-states are prepared to do whatever it takes, regardless of cost or manpower. A good, obvious and well-documented example is that both British and German agents were spending millions to impact US elections in the WWII period. There are obviously today hundreds of lobbying groups dedicated to producing propaganda and swaying legislation in the US that benefits their country. Some of it is aboveboard, some of it is not.
      • antifa 2y ago
        Or through buying your candidate's rug pull coins.
• helge9210 2y ago
  „Genossen, wir müssen alles wissen“ (if you know, what I mean)
  • computerthings 2y ago
    There is nothing to know. You want to claim this is "the actual oppression" without making the argument for it, likely because you have none.
• Anon84 2y ago
  Let me chime in quickly, from the perspective of someone who worked for a few years on Twitter data (see https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rtKaL18AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rtKaL18AAAAJ&hl=en...). The Twitter API used to be extremely open way back in the day. This proved to be a boon for all kinds of social (and not so social) science research. In my mind, this was also one of the reasons for Twitter early growth as it made it trivial to build apps that interact with it. Over the years, the API got increasingly closed, making research in this area extremely difficult. On the plus side, a decision like this can bring back the good old days of easy access for researchers. The down side, of course, is that it's almost impossible to define "researcher" in a way that prevents Cambridge Analytica like abuses from occurring again (not that the current owner is particularly interested in preventing them)
  • bmicraft 2y ago
    I was under the impression that the Cambridge Analytica situation was largely about 1: private data, 2: exclusive access to that private data, and 3: the secrecy about that data-sharing even happening in the first place. I think none of those things are happening here, do you agree with that?
  • watwut 2y ago
    Publicly known public access to public information and facebook secretly selling private information to private company are massively far from each other.
• honestSysAdmin 2y ago
  [dead]
• ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
  After feeding the bear now threatning us with nuclear annihilation, Germany does not have any legitimacy when it comes to policing critical voices
• miohtama 2y ago
  While there is right wing angle into this, I feel it might be just because Twitter does not want spend extra resources on handling government requests. Twitter is making losses, so let's not increase cost.
• niemandhier 2y ago
  Article 40 section 12 DSA. Fine could be up to 6% of the annual income of X and in addition up to 5% of the daily turnover for continued non compliance. The fact that Mr. Musk already stated that he would like to influence the elections would probably count as aggravating circumstances. The only question is how fast the bureaucracy can work.
• npvrite 2y ago
  [dead]