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Weizenbaum-Institut e.V.

WI

Das Weizenbaum-Institut erforscht interdisziplinär und grundlagenorientiert den Wandel der Gesellschaft durch die Digitalisierung und entwickelt Gestaltungsoptionen für Politik, Wirtschaft und Zivilgesellschaft.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Alexandra Geese (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and Wikimedia Foundation

6 Mar 2025 · Event: Bits und Bäume Policy Lab

Response to Delegated Regulation on data access provided for in the Digital Services Act

23 May 2023

The Weizenbaum Institute Berlin and the European New School of Digital Studies, supported by a great range of German Social Sciences scholars, take the opportunity to respond to the Call for Evidence by the Commission. We give a brief summary of our response below. The full response can be accessed via this link: https://doi.org/10.34669/WI.WPP/7 1) Data access needs: We identify three types of data access needs to study and mitigate systemic risks: 1) non-private communication data (e.g., user connections and interaction, distributed content data, content exposure data, and content engagement data); 2) user account metadata (e.g., profile information, group memberships, and 3) data governance documentation (i.e., platform governance decision that can affect user-to-user or user-to-content connections). Researchers must be enabled to conduct research on publicly communicating actors (e.g., users, political parties, NGOs), distributed content (e.g., emotionality, hate speech), targeted and reached audiences (e.g., exposure, diffusion patterns), platforms themselves (e.g., platform-use patterns, media diets, affordances), and media effects (e.g., willingness to political participation, depression, anxiety), particularly in times when these communication acts are essential for democratic processes (e.g., opinion formation during electoral campaigns). 2) Data access application and procedure: Data access requests should be handled by DSCs via online forms that adapt to the type of request and data and should follow the logic: the more sensitive and more encompassing data requested are, the more information is necessary. DSCs should make decisions about substantial quality (i.e., the study of systemic risk and mitigation measures, see Article 34(1)) and Article 35), ethical and technical conditions by themselves. A peer-review process (i.e., by objective referees such as uninvolved scholars from the same discipline) is deemed impractical. The added value of an independent advisory mechanism (IAM) would be to provide professional guidance, oversight, mediation, and scrutiny of the data access request process. Specifically, the independent advisory mechanism should be executed by an intermediary body governed by academic and civil society researchers (more detailed information is provided in the attached full response). 3) Data access formats and involvement of researchers: To facilitate use in academic research, access to VLOP and VLOSE data should be technically tiered in a measured fashion that balances legitimate research interests and ease of use with aspects of data security and privacy concerns. Two chief modes of access that have in the past proven their worth are web application programming interfaces specifically for research (research-oriented APIs, or R-APIs, such as Twitter's soon-to-be-defunct Academic Track or CrowdTangle) and virtual lab environments (or VLEs, e.g., Meta's Facebook Open Research & Transparency, or FORT, based on the popular JupyterLab). Note that we consider both approaches to be equally important (more detailed information is provided in the attached full response) 4) Access to publicly available data: The implementation of Article 40(12) should be prioritized as this will cover a great number of research questions scholars are working on, while the resources and developments necessary are minor. It will also prevent a gap in current platform research, as the implementation and first successful access requests under Article 40(4) will take longer and create a time gap where platform accountability is not yet in place. The list of supporters and the full response is available here: https://doi.org/10.34669/WI.WPP/7
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Meeting with Alexandra Geese (Member of the European Parliament)

19 May 2023 · Event: AI and ChatGPT

Response to Data Act (including the review of the Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases)

12 May 2022

The Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin congratulates the European Commission for approaching an important milestone in the implementation of the data strategy announced two years ago. The Data Act legislative proposal includes a package of measures that are expected make more IoT data available to data-driven enterprises. The legislation importantly seeks to bring about more competition in the aftermarkets for IoT devices and related services, more value generation from such data, and more technological innovation enabled by access to data. The most innovative and far-reaching regulative instrument applied in this context is, without doubt, the mandatory access rights regime that would facilitate flow of data from private (mostly large) enterprises to other (mostly smaller) enterprises and to the public sector. This regime is accompanied by rules about the necessity and content of commercial contracts that define private entitlements concerning access to as well as use of co-generated IoT data, including statutory requirements concerning fairness, non-discrimination and compensation. This Position Paper primarily addresses the access rights regime and its accompanying rules focusing on contracts regarding access to data. It also briefly touches upon the provisions on data portability, rules for switching between providers and trade secrets. We conclude that the consolidated impact of the access rights regime on IoT device manufacturers, third parties and the data economy at large is hard to predict. At the same time, we argue that the legal positions and entitlements the Data Act would create require further scrutiny and that there is certainly room for clarifications and improvements in the legislative proposal. The analysis concludes with several specific recommendations.
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