We, the EU, and 1064 Danes decided to look into YouTube: A story about how the EU gave us a law, 1064 Danes gave us their YouTube histories, and reality gave us a headache

We explore what happens when Europe’s ambitious data access laws meet the messy realities of studying major digital platforms. Using YouTube as a central case, we show how the European Union’s efforts to promote transparency through the GDPR, the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) are reshaping the possibilities and limits of independent platform research. At the heart of the discussion is a paradox: while these laws promise unprecedented access to the data that shape our digital lives, the information researchers and citizens actually receive is often incomplete, inconsistent, and difficult to interpret. In this talk, we take a close look at data donations from over a thousand Danish YouTube users, which at first glance did not reveal neat insights but sprawling file structures filled with cryptic data points. Still, if the work is put in, these digital traces offer glimpses of engagement and attention, and help us understand what users truly encountered or how the platform influenced their experiences. The talk situates this challenge within a broader European context, showing how data access mechanisms are set up in ways that strengthen existing power imbalances. Application processes for research data vary widely, requests are rejected or delayed without clear justification, and the datasets that do arrive frequently lack the granularity required for meaningful analysis. Yet the picture is not purely bleak. Citizens, researchers, and civil society already have multiple legal levers to demand greater transparency and accountability. The fundamental question is no longer whether democratic oversight is possible, but how we can use the tools at hand to make it real.