From the Wild West to the Walled Garden

This article traces the evolution of researcher access to social media data, using Twitter/X as a case study to illustrate broader structural patterns across the platform economy. Giglietto and Puschmann identify three distinct phases in Twitter's trajectory: an early "Wild West" period (2006–2020) of largely unregulated open APIs that enabled experimental, descriptive scholarship; a brief "Golden Age" (2020–2023) marked by the Academic Research API, which offered vetted scholars free, high-volume access to real-time and historical data; and the post-2023 era following Elon Musk's acquisition, in which academic access was abruptly dismantled and consolidated behind a costly commercial paywall. Situating this trajectory within a wider context, the authors note that parallel retrenchments—Meta's closure of CrowdTangle, Reddit's API pricing changes, and TikTok's persistently restrictive access—reveal a systemic pattern rather than an isolated case. The article then examines the regulatory turn embodied in the European Union's Digital Services Act, particularly Article 40, which reframes data access as a legal right tied to the study of "systemic risks" rather than a discretionary platform favor. While the DSA represents a significant paradigm shift, the authors document substantial implementation challenges: uneven platform compliance, structural asymmetries of knowledge between platforms and researchers, geographic limitations that disadvantage scholars outside the EU, and the risk of a "data abyss" that disproportionately excludes early-career researchers, civil society actors, and those in the Global South. The authors argue that progress toward data transparency is neither linear nor guaranteed, and they call for academic consortia, public investment in independent research infrastructure, multi-method approaches combining APIs with data donations and browser-based tools, and the international extension of regulatory frameworks. Independent research into platform effects, they conclude, must be recognized as a public good warranting sustained institutional support rather than reliance on platforms' shifting generosity.