🚨 First DSA Art. 40(4) data access decisions are in! Coimisiún na Meán has sent out its first responses to researcher applications. Did you apply for DSA data access? Log it in the DSA40 Tracker (takes ~10 min): www.soscisurvey.de/DSA40applica... Your input helps build researcher support tools!

⚡ DSA Article 40 data access decisions are rolling in, and ours (with A. Iamnitchi & T. Bertaglia) was rejected (we applied on day 1). With help from the Dutch & Irish Digital Service Coordinators, we learned a lot - reflections up on the @dsaobservatory.bsky.social) shorturl.at/lGoFF

If at first you don’t succeed: Reflections on a rejected Art. 40 DSA data access request - DSA Observatory

By Catalina Goanta & Anda Iamnitchi Article 40 of the Digital Services Act was hailed as a breakthrough for platform research. But what does the the procedure look like in practice? Drawing on their o...

shorturl.at

Wooo wooo ! you can now pre order and request inspection copies of Law Policy and the Internet, 2nd edn! w me, @mooseabyte.bsky.social and @cgoanta.bsky.social eds and an all star line up! Lots of AI but guaranteed no AI slop! Out August! www.bloomsbury.com/uk/law-polic...

Law, Policy, and the Internet

This innovative textbook edited by international experts in technology law and policy provides a comprehensive and accessible guide into the fast-evolving lands…

bloomsbury.com

NEW: As the EU starts investigating Grok over sexualized images, the harmful "nudify" ecosystem that targets women is getting even more dangerous. A review of 50+ deepfake sites shows they nearly all offer image-to-video generators, producing highly explicit outputs. One offers 60+ sexual scenarios

Deepfake ‘Nudify’ Technology Is Getting Darker—and More Dangerous

Sexual deepfakes continue to get more sophisticated, capable, easy to access, and perilous for millions of women who are abused with the technology.

wired.com

Sebastien Fassiaux successfully defended his PhD thesis @upf.edu "Preserving Consumer Autonomy through the EU Regulation of Artificial Intelligence-Driven Marketing", and the jury (including myself) was very excited about his DSA/conpro/competition law angle!

New issue dropped! Thanks to @sarahvahed.bsky.social @cgoanta.bsky.social @koenvanzon.bsky.social @whommes.bsky.social @historikarin.bsky.social @whommes.bsky.social @lolaavril.bsky.social and the others for some brilliant work. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

"Hanging with the T-Bros" youtu.be/QWT_A_7Jh9Y?... (Who else than @cgoanta.bsky.social introduced me to T-Bros influencers)

🧶New influencer case in NL: the Court of Gelderland ordered a food influencer to pay back €38,642.01 in welfare benefits (bijstand) received while the influencer was also getting brand deals (mostly barters). uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/details?id=E... 3 important takeaways:

The White House is doing influencer press briefings now and it speaks volume as to why journalists can’t be replaced www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

The White House is now holding press briefings specifically for MAGA influencers

‘So what direction do you advise me to go into?’ one MAGA media personality asked during the first ‘official influencer’ briefing that Karoline Leavitt held this week

independent.co.uk

Had a fantastic time at @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social last week. It was great to have discussions on the very timely topic of political influencers with @hannakainen.bsky.social, Johanna Arnesson, @taylorannabell.bsky.social and Romanian streamer Faiãr. Thank you for having us @cgoanta.bsky.social!

I’ve posted a number of threads over the past couple of weeks explaining the framework I’ve developed around disordered discourse and its outcomes. But I also want to explain why that framework is useful, beyond just mapping the problem or explaining how we got here.

@naomiappelman.bsky.social promoveert op het proefschrift: 'Contesting Online Exclusion. #EU-regulation of content moderation through an agonistic lens' op 28 februari. Haar promotoren zijn prof. dr. N. Helberger en prof. @jvh.bsky.social. https://bit.ly/4jYc8i5

Contesting Online Exclusion. EU-regulation of content moderation through an agonistic lens

Naomi Appelman will defend the dissertation 'Contesting Online Exclusion. EU-regulation of content moderation through an agonistic lens'. Supervisors are Prof. N. Helberger and Prof. J.V.J. van Hoboken.

bit.ly

When kids become their parents' content on TikTok! 🤳✨ Check out this timely paper by our community members @tomdivon.bsky.social @taylorannabell.bsky.social @cgoanta.bsky.social 👇

Tom Divon | توم ديفون | תום דיבון@tomdivon.bsky.social · last yr.

New publication! 🚨 Together with my brill team (@taylorannabell.bsky.social & @cgoanta.bsky.social), we explore how parents turn kids into commodities on TikTok, diving into the nuances of *kidfluencers* & raising legal questions about platform governance. See🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

X raises its Premium+ subscription to $40 per month, or $395 per year, after raising it to $22 per month in December 2024, following Grok3's launch (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

New publication! 🚨 Together with my brill team (@taylorannabell.bsky.social & @cgoanta.bsky.social), we explore how parents turn kids into commodities on TikTok, diving into the nuances of *kidfluencers* & raising legal questions about platform governance. See🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Trump White House redefines ‘the press’: “Whether you are a TikTok content creator, a blogger, a podcaster … if you are producing legitimate news content, you will be allowed to apply for press credentials to this White House” Seems small, huge ramifications! www.niemanlab.org/2025/01/whit...

White House will reserve front-row seats in press briefings for influencers, podcasters, and others in “new media”

When she took the podium for the first time on Tuesday afternoon, Karoline Leavitt became the youngest White House press secretary in history. The 27-year-old New Hampshire native is the sixth working...

niemanlab.org

Regulation vibe shift: adopting rules to hold predatory practices by highly powerful tech companies accountable is ‘screwing’ with US industry. The Brussels effect had a good run, platform governance will now likely go back to its initial US colonialism. www.politico.eu/article/zuck...

Zuckerberg urges Trump to stop the EU from fining US tech companies

Comparing the bloc’s antitrust penalties to tariffs, the Meta boss argued that Brussels is “screwing with” American industry.

politico.eu

🎉 Our paper "Influencer self-disclosure practices on Instagram: A multi-country longitudinal study" is officially out 🔗 shorturl.at/v2znK Led by @thalesbertaglia.bsky.social w/Adriana Iamnitchi, @cgoanta.bsky.social we analyzed 1M+ Instagram posts (2010–2020) from 400 influencers across 🇺🇸🇧🇷🇳🇱🇩🇪 >>>

Our legal computational paper led by @ThalesBertaglia w @gerasimoss & @2late2matter is out in Online Social Networks & Media! We look at self-disclosure practices by 400 influencers from 4 countries (NL, DE, BR & US) in 1m Instagram posts across 10 years. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

The Romanian Constitutional Court decision in the first of its kind annulment of the presidential elections of 2024 has now been motivated 🧵 s.iw.ro/gateway/g/Zmls…

RO president declassified intelligence reports about the presidential elections. Apart from the expected dimension of Russian interference & bots, TikTok confirmed one account paid €391k to other accounts supporting Calin Georgescu #monetization hotnews.ro/wp-content/upl…

Wow, the e-commerce strategy of TikTok (US) is reaching a whole new level and it's WILD. Here's an example: this influencer is sharing some hair growth tips - no disclosed brand partnerships, no e-commerce features embedded to her content...or so it seems 👀 1/

'EU upcoming Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) introduces significant new legal uncertainties... key technical guidance may not be finalized until (too late). Google will stop serving political advertising in the EU' before Oct'25 blog.google/around-the-g...

An update on political advertising in the European Union

Google will stop serving political advertising in the EU ahead of new regulation in October 2025.

blog.google

The Romanian presidential elections i.a. the fake account networks of the most popular candidate (independent & coming out of nowhere) will be a test of defining systemic risks under art 34(1)(c) of the Digital Services Act (negative effects on elections) www.politico.eu/article/elec...

TikTok CEO summoned to European Parliament over role in shock Romania election

The role of Chinese-owned TikTok is under scrutiny following the shock victory of a far-right candidate in Romania’s election.

politico.eu

Who were the biggest anti-Trump #resistance influencers born out of Trump's first presidency? Looking for people who became big on Twitter through posting resistance/anti Trump content.

So it seems there was a candidate behind this campaign and for many other reasons he was most voted in the first round. Very interesting & scary: a rather artificial engagement campaign led to virality that influenced TikTok’s *search bar* and further amplified the candidate 🫠

Catalina Goanta@cgoanta.bsky.social · 2y ago

Curious about how a basic political influencer campaign looks like? I scraped TikTok and analyzed 40 videos made for the upcoming Romanian presidential elections. humanads.eu/influencers-...

We tried to analyze the ad ecosystem of TikTok with the data available in February: tiktok-audit.com/blog/2024/ad...

Wrapped up the day with a guest lecture on influencers, social commerce, and consumer protection (Taylor's version) with the WONDERFUL students of @elibietti.bsky.social. Reminded me how much I love teaching and *how much I learn from students* 🫶

Today was truly a special day of my research stay in the US 💫 I had such a blast presenting my draft article on the regulation of e-commerce on social media under the DSA at @nusl.bsky.social. Forever grateful to @elibietti.bsky.social & @lexlanham.bsky.social for making it happen!

Regulators around the world