Post-Post-API Age: Studying Digital Platforms in Scant Data Access Times

2025-05-15

AI Summary

Despite the Digital Services Act (DSA), social media platform data accessibility remains severely constrained, exacerbating institutional, geographic, and resource-based inequities in academic research. This study employs a mixed-methods approach—combining surveys, in-depth interviews, and qualitative thematic analysis—with 19 researchers to systematically characterize data access challenges in the “post-post-API era.” Key barriers identified include protracted API application processes, high authentication requirements, and functionally narrow interfaces. Findings indicate that the DSA has not substantively alleviated data barriers; instead, it reveals critical gaps in platform governance and significant policy implementation deficits. Based on empirical evidence, the study proposes 12 actionable, multi-stakeholder governance recommendations—spanning enhanced platform accountability, researcher capacity-building, and regulatory mechanism refinement—to advance transparency, equity, and methodological rigor in digital platform research.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Natural Language Processing: Ethics — Bias, Fairness, Transparency & Privacy
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Graph Mining, Social Network Analysis & Community

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data quality in the era of algorithmically-generated content

Abstract

Over the past decade, data provided by digital platforms has informed substantial research in HCI to understand online human interaction and communication. Following the closure of major social media APIs that previously provided free access to large-scale data (the"post-API age"), emerging data access programs required by the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA) have sparked optimism about increased platform transparency and renewed opportunities for comprehensive research on digital platforms, leading to the"post-post-API age."However, it remains unclear whether platforms provide adequate data access in practice. To assess how platforms make data available under the DSA, we conducted a comprehensive survey followed by in-depth interviews with 19 researchers to understand their experiences with data access in this new era. Our findings reveal significant challenges in accessing social media data, with researchers facing multiple barriers including complex API application processes, difficulties obtaining credentials, and limited API usability. These challenges have exacerbated existing institutional, regional, and financial inequities in data access. Based on these insights, we provide actionable recommendations for platforms, researchers, and policymakers to foster more equitable and effective data access, while encouraging broader dialogue within the CSCW community around interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder solutions.

Problem

• Assessing DSA compliance in platform data access
• Identifying barriers to social media API usability
• Addressing inequities in digital research data availability

Innovation

• Surveyed DSA-mandated data access programs
• Interviewed researchers on API access challenges
• Proposed equitable data access solutions