Press Releases

LOWELL, MA – Today, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Innovation, Data, and Commerce Subcommittee, issued a statement after Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s decision to end free access to the platform’s free API.

“Twitter should be making it easier to study what’s happening on its platform, not harder. This move will make it more difficult for researchers to access the information necessary to understand harms on Twitter, including misinformation, foreign influence operations, and more. This is the latest in a series of bad moves from Twitter under Elon Musk’s leadership.”

Trahan and Congressman Sean Casten (IL-06) sent a letter to Musk in November 2022 requesting answers to questions about the future of Twitter’s transparency policies and researcher access. During a staff briefing with a Twitter representative in December, Trahan’s team was told that the company had no plans to limit researcher access and that Musk would not retaliate against researchers or journalists who post criticisms of the platform. That same day, Musk banned a number of journalists from Twitter. A request for a written response to Trahan and Casten’s request was never answered.

Trahan is the lead sponsor of the Digital Oversight Services and Safety Act, which would create an Office of Independent Researcher Access at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission tasked with standing up and overseeing a system through which certified researchers can study the impacts of covered platforms.

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