Social media researchers have canceled, suspended or changed more than 100 studies about X, formerly Twitter, as a result of actions taken by Elon Musk that limit access to the social media platform, nearly a dozen interviews and a survey of planned projects show.
Musk's restrictions on critical methods of gathering data on the global platform have suppressed the ability to untangle the origin and spread of false information during real-time events such as Hamas' attack on Israel and the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, researchers said.
The most important method was a tool that gave researchers access to data on about 10 million tweets per month. Twitter notified researchers in February it would end free academic access to this application programming interface (API) as part of an overhaul of the tool, an email shows.