Nearly a Decade after the APIcalypse: Where Are We Now on Social Media Data Access? (SMAD 2026)

Snurb — Friday 27 March 2026 18:59
Government | 'Big Data' | Social Media | Social Media Access Days 2026 |

Social Media Access Days 2026

Nearly a Decade after the APIcalypse: Where Are We Now on Social Media Data Access?

Axel Bruns

Presentation Slides

Abstract

2018’s Cambridge Analytica scandal served as a convenient excuse for many social media platforms to severely curtail access to their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), restricting the critical, independent, public-interest scrutiny of public communication on social media, and of the platforms’ management and moderation of such communication, at a time of increasing polarisation, disinformation, toxicity, and general dysfunction in public debate. At the time, four broad pathways appeared available to researchers seeking to address this ‘APIcalypse’: to walk away, to lobby for change, to accommodate and acquiesce, and to break the rules; all four paths have been explored in the contexts of different platforms, but the severe disruption to established research approaches has also led many of us to critically evaluate how and why we have used the social media activity data that APIs (used to) provide. Reviewing developments across a range of leading and emerging platforms, this keynote explores the current situation in our field, and discusses possible future developments.

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