KGI focuses on expanding access to public platform data so that researchers, policymakers, and the public can better understand how platforms affect individuals, communities, and societies. By leveraging the research community’s experience with different forms of data access, KGI works to drive practical and policy changes that strengthen transparency and accountability.
Access to public data about online discourse – the reach of viral posts, the spread of information, and so much more – is essential for accountability and informed public conversations. Public data access enables independent research and investigation, informs evidence-based policymaking, and advances collective understanding about the role of online platforms in our lives.
For over a decade, stakeholders both inside and outside platform companies have debated forms of transparency from digital platforms. Thanks to transparency advocates, we have seen various transparency regimes take hold – voluntary, self-regulatory, and regulatory – requiring platforms to share information about their activities, algorithms, and processes with vetted entities including researchers, regulators, or business competitors, and sometimes with the broader public. At the same time, some organizations and individuals have extensive experience independently collecting and analyzing public platform data.
Yet the tools that once allowed researchers, journalists, and civil society to study these platforms are disappearing, undermining transparency and accountability. Platforms restrict researcher access while public data is monetized for advertisers, data brokers, and AI training. This imbalance – where companies profit but independent researchers are left in the dark – undermines transparency and weakens oversight.
KGI is focused on public access to public platform data as a means to enable any interested party to understand the relationships between online platforms and individuals, communities, and societies. Our work on public data access advances practical and policy changes that expand our ability to understand the online information ecosystem. Learn more about the Publicly Available Platform Data Expert Working Group here.
Join us in-person or virtually as Jonathan Sallet, lead litigator for the State Plaintiffs in the landmark US v. Google search antitrust case, breaks down the trial and remedies issued by the court.
In-person & Virtual
Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy Auditorium
125 E St. NW, Washington, DC
12:30pm ET
View this event
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On September 2, US District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued an opinion that many in the tech industry had been waiting on for more than 15 years: a ruling about how to rectify Google’s maintenance of its illegal monopoly in online search. The most consequential aspect of the opinion is that the remedies will not meaningfully address the conduct at the center of the case: Google paying distributors like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla tens of billions of dollars per year to lock in Google Search as the default on nearly every mobile phone and across much of the desktop browser market.
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The UK Competition and Markets Authority has provisionally designated Google as having Strategic Market Status – a step toward curbing the company’s dominance in online search. The Knight-Georgetown Institute finds evidence to support this designation and urges the UK to prioritize stronger interventions that address key barriers to entry in the search market.
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The European Commission’s new guidelines to protect minors online mark a step forward in online child safety, offering recommendations for how platforms are designed, including limits on manipulative design techniques, defaults to maximize protection, more agency for children, and regular risk reviews.
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Robust and comprehensive remedies in the US government’s Google search antitrust case would help prevent Google from leveraging its monopoly power in search to dominate the emerging market for generative AI products.
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A new report by Ofcom, the UK’s communication services regulator, underscores the challenges researchers face in accessing platform data and proposes a roadmap to improve researcher’s access to data to support online safety.
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A new legislative toolkit from the Knight-Georgetown Institute equips lawmakers with modular components to support the development of legislation that encourages algorithmic feeds that put people first.
