Taylor Owen on Social media platforms’ election-integrity initiatives lack transparency | The Globe and Mail

April 1, 2025 | Professor Taylor Owen spoke on the new social media regulations as the elections approaches closer. If social-media companies wanted to help improve election integrity, they could share what’s happening on their platforms with researchers, said Owen. X used to give researchers access to its application programming interface (API), or data, but now its most in-depth access level costs about $40,000 a month, mentioned Owen, which effectively shuts out Canadian researchers. Meta also ended CrowdTangle in August, which was the main way researchers studied Facebook and Instagram, he said. “They are making their platforms more opaque right at a time where we need transparency,” Owen said.