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In the course of under a year, the European Commission has launched some of the most important regulatory proposals to date on platform governance. The Commission's goals behind cross-sectoral regulation of this sort include the protection…
Recent decisions to discontinue access to social media APIs are having detrimental effects on Internet research and the field of computational social science as a whole. This lack of access to data has been dubbed the Post-API era of…
The European Commission recently introduced new regulation to harmonize transparency reporting of large online platforms under the Digital Services Act (DSA). Here, we present the first systematic evaluation of transparency reporting data…
The Digital Services Act (DSA) introduced by the European Union in 2022 offers a landmark framework for platform transparency, with Article 40 enabling vetted researchers to access data from major online platforms. Yet significant legal,…
Since September 2023, the Digital Services Act (DSA) obliges large online platforms to submit detailed data on each moderation action they take within the European Union (EU) to the DSA Transparency Database. From its inception, this…
Datasets sourced from people with disabilities and older adults play an important role in innovation, benchmarking, and mitigating bias for both assistive and inclusive AI-infused applications. However, they are scarce. We conduct a…
Increasingly common open data and open application programming interfaces (APIs) together with the progress of data science -- such as artificial intelligence (AI) and especially machine learning (ML) -- create opportunities to build novel…
The use of social media is ubiquitous and nowadays well-established in our everyday life, but increasingly also before, during or after emergencies. The produced data is spread across several types of social media and can be used by…
Recent application programming interface (API) restrictions on major social media platforms challenge compliance with the EU Digital Services Act [20], which mandates data access for algorithmic transparency. We develop a structured audit…
Social media platforms curate access to information and opportunities, and so play a critical role in shaping public discourse today. The opaque nature of the algorithms these platforms use to curate content raises societal questions. Prior…
The European legislature has proposed the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) to regulate platforms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) products. We review to what extent third-party audits are part of both laws…
Publicly available data from open sources (e.g., United States Census Bureau (Census), World Health Organization (WHO), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)) are vital resources for policy makers, students and researchers across…
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are essential tools for social work researchers aiming to harness advanced technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs) and other AI services. This paper demystifies APIs and illustrates how they…
The Digital Services Act (DSA) is a much awaited platforms liability reform in the European Union that was adopted on 1 November 2022 with the ambition to set a global example in terms of accountability and transparency. Among other…
Article 40(12) of the Digital Services Act (DSA) requires Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) to provide vetted researchers with access to publicly accessible data. While prior work has identified shortcomings of platform-provided data…
Online services like Google provide a variety of application programming interfaces (APIs). These online APIs enable authenticated third-party services and applications (apps) to access a user's account data for tasks such as single sign-on…
Recent studies reveal widespread concern and increasing lack of understanding about how personal data is collected, shared, and used online without consent. This issue is compounded by limited options available for digital citizens to…
Social media platforms face heightened risks during major political events; yet, how platforms adapt their moderation practices in response remains unclear. The Digital Services Act Transparency Database offers an unprecedented opportunity…
The popularity of the online media-driven social network relation is proven in today's digital era. The many challenges that these emergence has created include a huge growing network of social relations, and the large amount of data which…
The Digital Services Act (DSA) introduces harmonized rules for content moderation and platform governance in the European Union, mandating robust compliance mechanisms, particularly for very large online platforms and search engines. This…