With a ruling that raises serious concerns about government-endorsed monitoring of online speech, a German court has ordered Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, to provide researchers with data to track so-called “election-swaying” information. The decision, handed down by the Berlin district court, follows an urgent complaint filed by two civil rights organizations demanding access to platform analytics ahead of Germany’s national election on February 23.
The court justified its ruling by arguing that “waiting any longer for access to the data would undermine the applicants’ research project since the period immediately before the election is crucial.” X had reportedly failed to respond to a request for information, leading the court to rule against the company and order it to pay €6,000 ($6,255) in legal costs.
The GFF and Democracy Reporting International claim that under European law, platforms like X must provide structured, easily searchable access to information about post reach, shares, and likes.
While this data is already publicly available, albeit requiring manual collection, activists insist that X should make it more accessible to their research efforts — effectively demanding that the platform do its work for them.
With this ruling, X is now compelled to provide this data from now until shortly after the election, a move that could open the door for further demands to police speech under the guise of fighting “disinformation.” The broad and subjective nature of what constitutes “misinformation” raises concerns about selective enforcement, particularly given the German government’s increasingly aggressive stance toward online speech regulation.
Given the timing of the ruling and the increasing pressure on social media platforms to police political speech, this case highlights the growing tension between free expression and state-backed efforts to control online speech.
