The EU’s own diplomatic service has published a report admitting that X makes its data more accessible to researchers than other major platforms, and then used that admission to brand X the primary channel of “foreign information manipulation and interference” against the bloc.
The European External Action Service (EEAS) put this in writing. The media ran with the conclusion and buried the caveat.
The fourth annual FIMI Threats report, released this month, found that “88% of instances were concentrated on the platform X. The presence of CIB networks, the ease of creation of fabricated accounts, but also more straightforward access to data, explains this concentration.
Most of the major social media platforms restrict access to data that would allow for assessing the magnitude of information manipulation activities.”
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Read that again. The EEAS is telling you that X appears dominant in its findings partly because X lets researchers see what’s happening, while other platforms don’t.
Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube: their data is locked down. So the manipulation happening there goes unmeasured. X gets flagged precisely because it’s more open.
That context was largely absent from the headlines that followed. Polskie Radio ran with “Social network X is the main channel of disinformation against the EU and politicians are the biggest targets.” Plataforma Media went with “X (Twitter) main disinformation channel against EU.” Neither headline mentioned that the EU’s own analysts acknowledged a significant part of this concentration reflects X’s comparatively open data environment, not just the actual prevalence of manipulation on the platform.
The timing makes this worse. Three months before the FIMI report landed, the European Commission fined X €120 million under the Digital Services Act. One of the three violations cited was the failure to provide access to public data for researchers. X’s terms of service prohibit eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, including through scraping.
What’s more, X’s processes for researchers’ access to public data impose unnecessary barriers, effectively undermining research into several systemic risks in the European Union.
So the EU fined X for restricting researcher access to data. Then the EEAS published a report crediting X’s comparatively open data access as a reason it dominates the FIMI numbers. Both things happened. Neither position was retracted, and the Commission’s fine remains on the books.
The contradiction gets sharper when you look at what was happening in Germany around the same time. Two NGOs, Democracy Reporting International (DRI) and the Society for Civil Rights (GFF), sued X under the DSA for refusing to hand over data ahead of Germany’s February 2025 federal election.
“Other platforms have granted us access to systematically track public debates on their platforms, but X has refused to do so,” said Michael Meyer-Resende of DRI. A Berlin court sided with the NGOs and ordered X to comply.
The funding behind that lawsuit is worth noting. DRI’s largest single funder is the European Commission itself, which provided €5.7 million in 2023 alone.
The same institution that fined X €40 million for DSA non-compliance is also the primary financial backer of the group that just won a court order forcing X to comply with the DSA. GFF’s funding trail has its own texture.
The Mozilla Foundation granted money to GFF specifically to support “enforcement of research data access based on the DSA,” the precise legal mechanism at the center of this lawsuit. Mozilla’s revenue comes overwhelmingly from Google, via a search engine deal. DuckDuckGo also appears on GFF’s donor list.
The same pattern repeated in February this year. A Berlin court ordered X to hand over data on Hungarian election activity to researchers, again ruling in favor of DRI after X refused. Hungary votes in April.
X’s performance in this area was serious enough to be the basis of the European Commission’s fine decision for €120 million, which found that X only accepts 4.7 percent of the data access requests it receives. That’s the Commission’s own figure. Most formal research requests to X get rejected.
And yet, according to the EEAS, the platform still provides “more straightforward access to data” than its competitors. Which means the others are offering even less. The platforms that accept close to zero research requests are shielded from FIMI statistics entirely. Their manipulation problems don’t show up in the numbers because researchers can’t get at the data to find them.
The FIMI report covered 540 incidents detected throughout 2025. The EEAS is careful to note that identified trends should not be interpreted as exhaustive, as the analysis remains shaped by the focus and scope of monitoring efforts. That disclaimer appears in the small print. The headline number, 88% on X, does not come with it.
What the EU has built here is a measurement system that rewards opacity. Platforms that restrict data access don’t show up in the statistics. They’re not transparent enough to be monitored. X, which at least allows more data to flow than the alternatives, becomes the visible target. More visibility equals more accountability equals more blame. Close your data off and disappear from the count.
