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Meta and TikTok are obstructing researchers' access to data, EU commission rules
- paxys 1y agoRemember that Cambridge Analytica was "research" as well. Laws like these sound good on paper, but it's the company that has to deal with the fallout when the data is used improperly. Unless the government can also come up with a fool proof framework for data sharing and enforce adequate protections, it's always going to be better for the companies to just say no and eat the fines.
- shakna 1y agoWhich is why the EU doesn't use a letter-of-the-law system, and also have an ethics regulation system. So it falls on those misusing the data, unless you knew it would be misused but collected it anyway. Golden rule: Don't need the data? Don't collect it.
- verst 1y agoAs I recall it Cambridge Analytica was a ton of OAuth apps (mostly games and quizzes) requesting all or most account permissions and then sharing this account data (the access for which had been expressly (foolishly) granted by the user) with a third-party data aggregator, namely Cambridge Analytica. Only this re-sharing of data with a third party was against Facebook Terms of Service. I would not classify Cambridge Analytica as research. They were a data broker that used the data for political polling.
- paxys 1y agoFrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica > The New York Times and The Observer reported that the company had acquired and used personal data about Facebook users from an external researcher who had told Facebook he was collecting it for academic purposes.
- tguvot 1y agolink from sentence that you copy pasted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana... The data was collected through an app called "This Is Your Digital Life", developed by data scientist Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research in 2013.[2] The app consisted of a series of questions to build psychological profiles on users, and collected the personal data of the users' Facebook friends via Facebook's Open Graph platform.[2] The app harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook profiles
- pms 1y agoThis "research" and data access wouldn't be allowed under the DSA, because (i) the researcher didn't provide any data protection safeguards, (ii) his university (and data protection officer) didn't assume legal liability for his research, (iii) his research isn't focused on systemic risks to society.
- tguvot 1y agonot sure what's the point that you are making. but under "common sense comments act of 2054" unclear comments are not allowed.
- brendoelfrendo 1y agoThe article for this post is about the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA). Since the original comment argues against research access to data by arguing that "Cambridge Analytica was research as well," another poster chimed in to rebut that assertion by arguing that Aleksandr Kogan's research would not have been allowed access to user data under the DSA and thus, that specific legal concern is moot.
- tguvot 1y agokogan "research" harvested data through application and he was outside of eu. so even it was happening today, whatever he did is irrelevant to EU/DSA unless they plan to chase everybody across the globe. somewhat like ofcom going after 4chan
- _--__--__ 1y agoI don't think you get it: the EU has a law that says these researchers need to find casus belli to wrestle the norms of online freedom of speech away from American corporations. Therefore they get to request data on every account that has ever interacted with certain political parties on those platforms, as a treat.
- jack_tripper 1y ago>EU has a law that says these researchers need to find casus belli Like pepe the frog memes
- pms 1y agoRepublicans and Elon Musk have become very skilled at exerting political influence in the US [1] and Europe [2] through social media in ways the public isn't really aware of. Is this really that far from the goal of Cambridge Analytica of influencing elections without people's knowledge? Is it fine for large online platforms to influence election outcomes? Why wouldn't an online platform be used to this end if that's beneficial for it and there is no regulation discouraging it? [1] https://www.techpolicy.press/x-polls-skew-political-realitie https://www.techpolicy.press/x-polls-skew-political-realitie... [2] https://zenodo.org/records/14880275 https://zenodo.org/records/14880275
- santadays 1y agoI can’t imagine this is not happening. There exists the will, the means and the motivation, with not a small dose of what pg might call naughtiness.
- terminalshort 1y agoI can't stand this "influencing elections" nonsense. It's a term meant to mislead with connotations of manipulating the voting tabulation when what is actually going on is influencing people to vote the way you want them to, which is perfectly legal and must always be legal in a functioning democracy.
- adamors 1y agoIt’s so perfectly legal that other nation states can do it for you and you might end up with a winner that people didn’t even hear about before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Romanian_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Romanian_presidential_ele...
- terminalshort 1y agoWho are these "people" that you claim never heard of him before? Kind of sounds like BS to me because, you know, he won the election...
- pms 1y agoLong story short, this "research" and data access wouldn't be allowed under the DSA, because (i) the researcher didn't provide any data protection safeguards, (ii) his university (and their data protection officer) didn't assume legal liability for his research, (iii) his research isn't focused on systemic risks to society.
- loeg 1y agoPlatforms (reasonably!) do not trust random academic researchers to be safe custodians of user data. The area of research focus and assumption of liability do not matter. Once a researcher's copy of data is leaked, the damage is done.
- whatevertrevor 1y agoYup, when the data breach happens the headlines aren't going to be "Random well meaning researchers caught in data breach exposing user data". They're going to be: "5 million Facebook logins hacked in massive data breach", and you'd be hard pressed to find actual information on how the leak happened, just like the gmail story from a few days ago.
- pms 1y agoNo researcher will request or get access to "5 million Facebook logins" through the DSA, since such a request wouldn't comply with the DSA requirements, so your point is moot. In fact, we live in a quite different world than you imagine. Currently, researchers don't even have access to the public data, as the article points out. When it comes to private data, researchers won't get access to private messages either, but rather to aggregate-level privacy-preserving data (assuming that the DSA isn't killed before any of this happens by the industry and Republicans, which you seem to advocate for).
- hnidiots3 1y ago[flagged]
- SilverElfin 1y agoSorry but this sounds like a privacy nightmare. No one should trust random researchers with mountains of data. They clearly won’t know how to secure it. But also the angle of trying to police information and elections is disturbing, especially after several instances of the EU interfering in elections in recent times.
- anonymousDan 1y agoYou talk as if the US hasn't attempted to interfere in elections. If online ads can be trivially used by big US tech companies to sway our elections using misinformation without it being observable to anyone or possible to refute (as would be the case for newspaper or TV ads) then why shouldn't it be monitored?
- andsoitis 1y agoCan you tell us more about how big tech had used ads to sway elections? Also, minor detail, TikTok in the EU is not a US tech company.
- pms 1y agoI don't think it's about the US in its entirety, nor ads, but Republicans and Elon Musk have become very skilled at exerting political influence in the US [1] and Europe [2] through social media in ways the public isn't really aware of: [1] https://www.techpolicy.press/x-polls-skew-political-realities-of-us-presidential-elections https://www.techpolicy.press/x-polls-skew-political-realitie... [2] https://zenodo.org/records/14880275 https://zenodo.org/records/14880275
- anigbrowl 1y agoThe platforms themselves strike many as a privacy nightmare. I'm not aware of any mass data breaches that can be attributed to poor academic security in recent memory. instances of the EU interfering in elections Do tell.
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- dmix 1y agoI'd hate to be the engineer that has to deal with these requests. Not even a formal government investigation, just any number of random 3rd party researchers demanding specialized access.
- consumer451 1y ago> Engineer Let me know when devs get stamps that make them legally liable for their decisions. Only then will that honor be applicable to software.
- tdb7893 1y agoMost of my friends are mechanical or aerospace engineers and it's all the same job in a different medium (many do a significant amount of software as part of their work). They don't have stamps and aren't any more legally liable than we are and staying we aren't engineers just seems to be a misunderstanding of what engineering is.
- consumer451 1y agoI grew up in a structural and civil engineering family. My issue is that there is no path to "professional engineer" or "architect" in software, which as a Hammurabi old, makes me suspect of the entire profession. I am involved in software dev, and I would never call it engineering. This might be niche semantics, and yet it feels very important to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_en... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
- zeroonetwothree 1y agoYes well unfortunately you aren’t the English language semantics overlord. So it doesn’t much matter what you think compared to general usage.
- hexage1814 1y agoDo their own scraping, for God's sake.
- pms 1y agoExcept platforms don't allow it and have sued for it... https://www.google.com/search?q=x+sues+researchers https://www.google.com/search?q=x+sues+researchers
- Esophagus4 1y agoIt's a shame the legal system favors big money, because courts typically rule that scraping public data is not against the law[1]. In spite of how much the platforms protest. Sadly, big companies can bully the scrapers with nuisance lawsuits as long as they wear the scrapers down in legal costs before it gets to trial. [1]https://www.proskauer.com/release/proskauer-secures-dismissal-of-scraping-claims-against-bright-data https://www.proskauer.com/release/proskauer-secures-dismissa...
- pms 1y agoThat's exactly the reason why we need platform transparency and accountability regulation like the EU's DSA.
- loeg 1y agoGood!
- pms 1y agoPlease elaborate.
- Workaccount2 1y agoEurope doing everything possible to scare away modern industry.
- pms 1y agoI hope it's quite the opposite, since this can lead to innovation as we figure out how to depolarize social media platforms or how to develop more politically neutral online media.
- mc32 1y agoI agree on the need for depolarization (go back to timelines and get rid of recommendation engines) but once you cede control of content to government even if it's for things people would agree on like "nuke that misinformation" you will end up being a mouthpiece for the government in power -whoever it be. Look at how "innocent" embeds wholly shaped the messaging on Covid and how they sidelined all dissent (lots of people of renown and stature within relevant disciplines)
- pms 1y agoThat's a great point. I agree that's a danger, but please note DSA doesn't cede the control of content to government, but rather it creates an institution of (national) Digital Service Coordinators (DSCs) that decide whether a researcher's access to data is well-reasoned. In most cases that institution will be in a different country (the country of company's EU's HQs) than the researcher. That said, there could be malicious players involved, e.g., researchers and respective DSCs secretly recruited by a government to influence elections. This, however, sounds implausible, since in principle both the DSCs and researchers are independent from national governments. Also, we can have depolarized recommendation algorithms. We don't need to go back all the way to timelines.
- thesmtsolver 1y agoThat's quite optimistic given EU's track record in practice. E.g., DieselGate. Europe was more impacted but US caught Volkswagen cheating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#European_actions,_2015–2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#E...
- abtinf 1y agoChat Control is a never ending battle.
- ggm 1y agoAmerican corporations don't want to accede to european rules about access to data, but it would be grossly simplistic to say all the problem lies on either side. I am not an EU resident but I tend to think there are sound reasons for some of what they want, and as American corporate entities the majors are bound in some tricky issues around US state department expectations, FTC expectations, but it isn't just trade, it's also civil liberties and privacy-vs-security political autonomy issues. I would have preferred the companies like this emerged as federated entities and european data stayed in european DC and was subject to european laws. I think it would have avoided a lot of this, if they had not constructed themselves to be a single US corporate sheild, with transfer pricing on the side to maximise profit.
- user3939382 1y agoThese services shouldn’t exist in the first place.
- charcircuit 1y agoAllowing mass scraping like researchers want will further push people away from public platforms towards private group chats like Discord.
- pms 1y agoRepublicans and Elon Musk have become very skilled at exerting political influence in the US [1] and Europe [2] through social media in ways the public isn't really aware of. Is this really that far from the goal of Cambridge Analytica of influencing elections without people's knowledge? Is it fine for large online platforms to influence election outcomes? Why wouldn't an online platform be used to this end if that's beneficial for it and there is no regulation discouraging it? [1] https://www.techpolicy.press/x-polls-skew-political-realitie https://www.techpolicy.press/x-polls-skew-political-realitie... [2] https://zenodo.org/records/14880275 https://zenodo.org/records/14880275
- pms 1y agoI'm very curious why this is downvoted. Would any of the down-voters mind elaborating?
- nothrowaways 1y agoHi X
- nothrowaways 1y agoThey left out X because he will bitch_ about it to his 600 million followers lol.
- nothrowaways 1y agoInteresting times
- pms 1y agoDid you read the article? X was first to be accused by the EU Commission.
- sva_ 1y agoI'm not really sure what the argument is for letting these researchers make users of these platforms non-consenting participants in their studies? Is it even possible to opt out?
- MiiMe19 1y agoNope :D The EU has determined that you WILL be a part of these studies!
- _el1s7 1y agoYes, there is an opt out, make your profile private.
- xyzal 1y agoWell, I am far more concerned with a secretive megacorp shaping public discourse. The requested transparency is a means to assess impartiality or bias of such platforms.
- _el1s7 1y agoThat's why https://tikapi.io https://tikapi.io exists.
- Nio1024 1y agoBecause of the EU’s strict regulations, many internet products have simply given up on the European market. In some ways, this makes Europe seem a bit “behind the times.” Of course, the world still needs some conservatives to keep things in balance.
- pms 1y agoI'd say that's fine. That's a great opportunity for the EU to develop its industry.
- hnidiots3 1y agoHmmm apparently EU Commission is not a bully (despite it acting so) HN very defensive of wanting to allow people to research and use your data.
- darqis 1y agoWhat about X? You have to pay to use the API