X has publicly confirmed that it will challenge the Berlin Court’s decision that applies the Digital Services Act to the platform, forcing them to grant researchers immediate data access.
X challenged the decision by the Berlin regional court from earlier this month, to provide unlimited data access to researchers from two German-based civil society organisations, Democracy Reporting International and Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, legally required under Article 40 DSA.
In its press release, X stated that the decision undermined its fundamental right to due process by not providing sufficient time to respond or comment on the case. The application for data access lacked crucial information, according to the platform.
The Court’s decision undermined the privacy and free speech of X users, they argued.
Moreover, X said that the judge who ruled on the case from the Berlin Regional Court used to work for Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte which is a conflict of interest, as it is the civil society organisation that brought the case to the Court and represented the applicant. The platform questioned the impartiality of the decision.
The Berlin Regional Court ruled in favour of the two civil society organisations and asked X to immediately provide access to data to researchers, before and shortly after the German elections on February 23.
So far, X has not provided access to the data to the researchers. According to Democracy Reporting International, the first application to access X’s data was sent in May after which the platform asked follow-up questions. In November, the platform rejected the application for data access, arguing that the research ”did not comply with systemic risks”.
Democracy Reporting International secured access to Meta and TikTok by filing the access to data for research requests under Article 40 DSA.
