Art. 40 DSA and research data access in the German federal election: a mixed experience at best

Article 40 of the Digital Services Act (DSA) aims at enabling research data access and strengthening transparency in the context of very large online platforms. However, the reality of our research in the run-up of the German federal election were stalled applications, highly restrictive and limited data access, insufficient documentation, unresponsive support and technical problems with service reliability. With the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Union has taken a decisive step to...