Researchers have exactly the same right to this data as X has to accessing the German market. If they want to make money, they play by the rules chosen by the people of that country. They are free to not sell their services if they don't like the deal offered.
Because that is what is democratically voted for? If the people (or the representatives they voted for) say that society having access to that data is what society wants, then the company can either provide that data, or have it taken from them.
There should not be a scenario where a company "beats" society.
Almost all of the countries we label as "democracies" have constitutions, and many of those constitutions limit what can be "democratically voted for". In the United States, the constitution has strict limits on ceaseing private property. That does not mean the US is not "democratic" by common usage of the term. Those living in democracies that thus protect private property rights may find laws that encroach on those private property rights odd, and be against them. Even in a country that has no such protections, one may be against such laws.
We are aware of the problems the US has. But the question "Why would anyone in a democracy accept" is easily answered, and as such I did.
As for the statements on encroachment or protections: this is about public data, not about private data or secrets.
The argument made in court is about research facilities due to the outsized impact X can make. You want to play in someone else's country, you'll have to follow their rules. This works the other way around as well, if a German company were to host their data in the US, they would have to accept that the government can snoop on that data whenever they want since the US does not protect German citizens. (and as such, privacy laws in Germany and in the EU since around 1995 do not allow private data to be transferred by default)
Something more countries might want to do is protect citizens from large corporations. They are not your friends.
Okay, I can see your point. I thought this was under the question "Why would anyone living in a democracy be against this?" but I see now it was a response to the other question that was response to that question.
It seems like that phrase "democracy" means different things to different people, depending on where they are from.
DSA and DMA is widely known, but perhaps not by their acronyms or every individual rule.
I don't know in what country you live, but this was not exactly some hidden issue, in almost all member states this was a local issue and had local news coverage as well.
The only way someone would not have been aware is if they spent none of their time on any local or global reports. But in those cases, everything is going to be something they are unaware of and we'd be talking about people who are essentially disconnecting themselves from society. Everyone else would have heard about it multiple times since even local elections made a point of mentioning it, and election turnout is high, even if you don't participate yourself for some reason, it would be really hard to not have talked to anyone who did.
You're mixing a whole lot of things in a big ball of mud here, with a lot of half-truths and assumptions. Are you doing that on purpose?
This is not about data that is private, it's not a 'copy of your private data against your wishes', it's research access to public data that has impact on civil society due to the outsized impact on daily life some multinationals have.
As for 'liberty': corporations are not people, if anything, society should be free to not have commercial meddling involved in their life. As with everything else there is a gradient here, it's not some extreme choice there either everything is allowed or nothing is allowed. But messing with society is something that is worth preventing, intentional or not. It takes data and research to do that. In most cases, public data, and that is what this is about.
Which researchers will have access? Who decides upon them and what is their specific objective? Can I have access to it for my research?
> commercial meddling
What do you mean by this? Who is meddling and with what?
The user of social media has a personal engagement with that company. I don't think a government should be involved in that relationship. Why do you think it should?
Don't do that, try and redirect the discussion using some dumb definition/semantics argument. This data is public data on posts that X locks behind a wall in order to force sign-ups and ad views. You and I both know the colloquial definition for "the people", it's literally the electorate of the state in question, in this case all the German citizens who are able to vote for the polticians who passed this public access law. This isn't the government trying to pry private company secrets from poor, downtrodden corporations, it's the government passing a law that public data from social media needs to be easy to access for researchers.
It's data the user has agreed to share with the company at agreement with their terms. The data is not public if it is not made public. If it was, they wouldn't need to compel them to hand it over.
Who are the researchers and what thesis are they exploring?
Moreover. Companies operate by Charter, via the will of the people (and the people is you or us). And regardless of any agreements companies have with shareholders, first and foremost, you have a responsibility to the people you live and operate with, to act for the peoples interests, otherwise you don't have a right to exist, contrary to the lack of action in law on this.
A Charter is a grant, from the people, for any for-profit organization to exist, it comes with certain restrictions and it can be revoked at any time.
Charter
a written grant by a country's legislative or sovereign power [The People], by which a body such as a company, college, or city is founded and its rights and privileges defined.
> 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.
Read the last half of that. The court agrees.
> information theoretically available by laboriously clicking through thousands of posts
Great, so we all agree that according to the German law, researchers have access to this data, so there is no need to argue about it! I would personally go so far as to say "the people" at large should also have access to the data, so that no one can weaponize the definition of "researcher" or "the people" (which is prone to happen, as evidenced here), but luckily that's not the conversation we're having today, in this case the law is very clear and the German courts agreed so. Also, the GP post by that individual had no point, it was ostensibly a question, but in the article they covered that in this case, according to the law and German courts, "the people" means "researchers", so they either didn't read the article or were redirecting for other reasons. I just wasn't going to play around with their "definitionalism" where definitions of simple things are the most important talking point in order to off-track a discussion.
> but in the article they covered that in this case, according to the law and German courts, "the people" means "researchers",
From my review [1] [2], it appears that "researchers" is undefined.
Ultimately, can anyone apply for full access for free? I'm sure a lot of people across the political spectrum are curious about this.
If you have a clarification, great. If not, the point stands. X already has a firehose API solution [3]. While it's pay to access, it's unclear what compliance steps these researchers will have to jump through or whether anyone can just override this revenue stream for X and force it to turn over proprietary data that would otherwise be paywalled.
Researches get access, they then publish their studies. The press picks up on these studies and interprets them for "the people", unless "the people" want to read the studies by themselves.
To the extent we’re talking about user activity on the site, the people already have access to this data by dint of being the ones who did the things. Sent a tweet, viewed a tweet, clicked a link. They already have it. So what is being asked of X?
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.
This law is not about arbitrary companies, but about large social networks affecting millions of people. Requiring a certain transparency from these seems justified.
There are vanishingly few private companies of significant size. For example in the US most businesses with more than a few owners are government chartered corporations, LLCs, and the like. This gets them government granted liability shields, and so it makes sense for them to be proactively regulated to prevent causing foreseeable harm that they might otherwise escape responsibility for.
