Admittedly, it's been a while since our last newsletter. But no worries, we've tried to make up for it with a juicy package that should make for some great Friday reading. Let us know if we missed anything - and be sure to share it with anyone to whom it may be helpful!

Coimisiún na Meán has released guidance on Art. 40(4) data access. We took a closer look 👇

You registered your data access request in the @dsa40collaboratory.bsky.social's Tracker, right? Don't be an Anakin. Contribute now: www.soscisurvey.de/DSA40applica... One more day to go!

No plans for the morning of the second day of #rp26? Come join us for breakfast at @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social to get an update on all the latest things data access!

We're wrapping up 2 years of tracking researcher experiences with DSA-based data access. If you haven't documented your application yet, please take 5 min to do so! We'll publish aggregated results AND turn them into actionable guidance for easier data access in the future 🙏🏻

Preprinted! Been working on this for ~1 year w wonderful coauthors Nancy & Mark: > Understanding Artificial Neural Networks: Mysterianism about Known Mechanism is Mysticism doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Have you noticed many experts say they don't understand AI? What's going on? 🤯 Let us tell you... 1/

Wir laden ein: Vortrag & Diskussion zum Buch „Was das Valley herrschen nennt” von @adriandaub.bsky.social. Er zeigt, wie Tech-Eliten Macht denken, legitimieren und zunehmend politischen Einfluss ausüben. 📅 01.06.2026, 16-18 Uhr 📍 Weizenbaum-Institut ➡️ Mehr Infos und Anmeldung: tinyurl.com/yc2mxd7h

I will always be here for a good “the map is not the territory” reference

Just migrated my data to @eurosky.social on servers in Germany - and can keep using bluesky like nothing happened. Next: re-starting to blog using @leaflet.pub. Genuinely excited to see where this goes. In case you are also considering to move 👉 move.eurosky.tech

And @lkseiling.bsky.social and Sophia Graf presenting lots of super useful work by the @dsa40collaboratory.bsky.social snurb.info/index.php/no... #smad2026 #digitalservicesact

The issue with data access under DSA Art. 40(4): only successful requests are published on the Commission's Data Access Portal. When it comes to rejected requests, researchers have to share information amongst themselves. That's what our data access tracker is for 👇

It’s not a privilege, it’s a researchers right! #DSA40 @lkseiling.bsky.social and I summarize what the European Commission decision in their case against X (I feel we should follow John Oliver and from now on call it Twitter again) means for researchers right to platform data access [in German]

Durchbruch für digitale Rechte – und für den Kampf gegen #Desinformation und #Wahlbeeinflussung online: Das Kammergericht Berlin entschied heute, dass die Plattform #X unserer Partnerorganisation @democracyreporting.bsky.social Zugang zu #Forschungsdaten geben muss. 💪

Heute verhandelt das Kammergericht Berlin, ob @democracyreporting.bsky.social von #X Plattformdaten bekommt, um zu Wahlbeeinflussung und Desinformation zu forschen. Obwohl DRI nach dem #DSA der EU ein Recht darauf hat, verweigert X die Herausgabe. Mehr Infos im Quotepost.

There have been increasingly shrill accusations against the EU over its digital legislation, based on accusations of "censorship" by defenders of "free speech" -- including, so it appears, the right to peddle an AI app that seemingly produces child sexual abuse material (CSAM). 1/9

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Anyone interested in drafting an Art. 40(4) DSA access request to make use of this moment? Looks like a great chance to figure out, how the @grok account fits into X' internal governance/moderation structures.

"Why Are Grok and X Still Available in App Stores? Elon Musk’s chatbot has been used to generate thousands of sexualized images of adults and apparent minors. Apple and Google have removed other “nudify” apps—but continue to host X and Grok." www.wired.com/story/x-grok...

The Guardian doing inexplicable voluntary free public relations work for a corporation profiting from sexual abuse by headlining this as the image gen being "turned off". It isn't off: they've just monetised it. What the fuck are we doing here people, come on. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

liked undressing any woman or child on the platform? throw us some cash and you can keep doing it

Gleich gehts los auf dem #39c3: Simone und Jürgen ziehen in „Hacking Karlsruhe - 10 years later“ nach zehn Jahren GFF Bilanz. Hier gehts zum Stream: streaming.media.ccc.de/39c3/fuse

#trump has been accusing the #eu of #censorship via its #digitalservicesact, but is any of what they are saying true? Let's investigate 🧵🔽 #eupol #uspol

Did you know that the new European Omnibus threatens research based on data donations? We wrote an open letter highlighting the problematic amendment (see below). Please consider reading and signing it. If the amendment goes through, this might well be the end of data donation research...

We recently concluded a special article series, “Seeing the Digital Sphere: The Case for Public Platform Data,” in collaboration with the Knight-Georgetown Institute, in which experts explored why access to public platform data is critical. Here’s a snapshot: (1/9)

Die Grünen sind nur Bürgerrechtspartei, wenn sie nicht in der Regierung sind. www.swr.de/swraktuell/b...

@lkseiling.bsky.social & @markscott.bsky.social plea in @techpolicypress.bsky.social for a new data access regime emerging from a "generation of decentralized platforms that treat data transparency not as a regulatory burden but as a civic and scientific good" www.techpolicy.press/in-critical-...

The most transparent, de-gamified way to do social media would be a “more like this / less like this” interface that nobody else sees. The “like” is pointless here anyway, while sharing is everything.

"Many of the deals OpenAI has struck — with chipmakers, cloud computing companies and others — are strangely circular. OpenAI receives billions from tech companies before sending those billions back to the same companies to pay for computing power and other services." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

two for one, nice 😎

"Gegen vier Uhr morgens drangen Be­am­t:in­nen in die Wohnung der syrischen Familie Seleman ein, führten die Geschwister Rouaa (24) und Ibrahim (28) ab und setzten sie in ein Flugzeug. Dabei sollten beide eine Ausbildung antreten. Der Flüchtlingsrat Schleswig-Holstein nennt das „Behördenwahnsinn“.

The key terms here are: 1) burdensome procedures 2)burdensome tools While the findings themselves are not public, let's take a closer look 🧵👇

I’ll be presenting this work at #CSCW2025 in Bergen on Tuesday at 2:30PM! We will be part of the session “Core Concepts in Privacy Research” (in the Bekken room) chaired by @emtseng.bsky.social ☺️

The parsing code and info on the schema based on Activity Streams 2.0 we suggested: gitlab.weizenbaum-institut.de/lukas.seilin... @lionw.bsky.social's latest paper on data donations: doi.org/10.12758/mda... (follow him for more to come soon!)

"Instagram head says company is not using your microphone to listen to you (with AI data, it won’t need to)" techcrunch.com/2025/10/01/i...

Für alle, die keine Zeit für ~36 Seiten und über 100 Fußnoten im Policy Paper haben, habe ich im Interview mit dem @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social kurz erklärt worum es im #DSA geht, welche Rolle Forschungsdatenzugang (#DSA40) spielt und was schulterzuckende US-Plattformen damit zu tun haben ⬇️

👉 Just published: "Empowering People in Online Spaces: Democracy and Well-being in Digital Societies" - Book of Abstracts of the Weizenbaum Conference 2025. #WIConf25 ➡️ doi.org/10.34669/WI.... 🔗

Haven't read this paper yet, but something has been on my mind: because diffusion and LLMs were more "discovered" than "invented," the explanations given for how they work, even by folks in the industry building them, are assumptions. Those stories drive AI narratives, and they're usually wrong.

Today, we’re proud to share the Coalition’s new report: The State of Independent Technology Research: Power in Numbers It's an offering to our community and all researchers doing public interest work–a reflection of collective strength, solidarity and persistence in the face of adversity. (1/2)

We already have over 100 sign-ups but a few spots are still available for Day 1 of the Data Access Days on research access to platform data under the Digital Services Act (DSA) — happening on 25 September 2025. Join us in Berlin! 👉 dsa40collaboratory.eu/data-access-... #DSA40 #DigitalServicesAct

This newsletter does not focus on the ongoing sabre-rattling from across the Atlantic. Instead, we recap all the work we've been doing since the last issue and examples and opportunities for constructive collective engagement around the DSA. Read here: dsa40collaboratory.eu/newsletters/...

Register to the #DSA40 Data Access days today before we reach maximum capacity! Join us in Berlin, September 25 & 26 - to connect and collaborate around DSA-based data access! More info here: dsa40collaboratory.eu/data-access-...

Was passiert eigentlich, wenn wir uns alle einig werden, dass das, was gerade weltweit grassiert und demokratische Errungenschaften sowie große Teile der Menschheit bedroht, Faschismus ist? Geht dann der antifaschistische Kampf los? Oder ist er dann schon gewonnen?

War crimes as a form of marketing

The U.S. administration is going all in on its AI death cult. It's side-lining the environment and it's own citizens to scale the build out of an over-leveraged technology, while aggressively pushing their technology onto other countries trying to distribute collapse-risk.

Or as I put it in a talk last year: This is not tech adoption, it is penetration - decidedly masculine, neither consensual nor reflected and it leaves us and our planet injured, if not violated. f we don't resist, we're - most literally - fucked.

Newsletter: This is the Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble: genAI is nothing like Uber or Amazon Web Services, there are no profitable genAI companies, agents do not and cannot exist, there is no AI SaaS story, and everything rides - and dies - on selling GPUs. www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-g...

„Wer beim Forschungsdatenzugang jetzt liefern muss” – @lkseiling.bsky.social, @dscheykopp.bsky.social, @claesdevreese.bsky.social & @ulrikeklinger.bsky.social heute im @tspbackground.bsky.social: 🔗 t1p.de/zf6pa ⬅️ #dsa @dsa40collaboratory.bsky.social

Meta just blew a hole in a EU plan to tame artificial intelligence models. Today, the technology giant was the first Big Tech company to come out saying it will not sign the EU's code of practice for general-purpose AI.

The discussions about big platforms are intense. The systemic risks are real. Now the #DSA Delegated Act is finally here to ensure data access for researchers. Time to put this system to work. W @lkseiling.bsky.social, we show how @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/time-to-deli...

Das Bundesinnenministerium von Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) plant ein Sonderregister für alle Menschen, die das Selbstbestimmungsgesetz in Anspruch genommen haben. Das ist nicht nur geschichtslos, sondern brandgefährlich