As the problems of misinformation, child welfare, and heightened political polarization on social media platforms grow more salient, lawmakers and advocates are pushing to grant independent researchers access to social media data to better understand these problems. Yet researcher access is controversial. Privacy advocates and companies raise the potential privacy threats of researchers using such data irresponsibly. In addition, social media companies raise concerns over trade secrecy: the data these companies hold, and the algorithms powered by that data are secretive sources of competitive advantage.
This Article shows that one way to navigate this difficult strait is by drawing on lessons from the successful governance program that has emerged to regulate the sharing of clinical trial data. Like social media data, clinical trial data implicates both individual privacy and trade secrecy concerns. Nonetheless, clinical trial data’s governance regime was gradually legislated, regulated, and brokered into existence, managing the interests of industry, academia, and other stakeholders. The result is a functionally successful (if yet imperfect) clinical trial data-sharing ecosystem.
Part I sketches the status quo of researchers’ access to social media data and provides a novel taxonomy of the problems that arise under this regime.
Part II reviews the legal structures governing how clinical trial data is shared and traces the history of scandals, investigations, industry protest, and legislative response that gave rise to the mix of mandated sharing and experimental programs we have today.
Part III applies lessons from clinical trial data sharing to social media data and charts a strategic course forward. Two primary lessons emerge: First, law without institutions to implement the law is insufficient, and second, data access regimes must be tailored to the data they make available.