Brazil has the lowest level of transparency in social media data access among the regions studied in a new report by NetLab UFRJ, a research group at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
The report, titled "Data Not Found: Social Media Transparency for Information Integrity," assessed the level of access to public content and advertising data on 15 platforms in the European Union, the United Kingdom and Brazil. It found that transparency among major social networks is now the exception rather than the rule.
Researchers said that in most cases, academics, oversight bodies and civil society groups face blocked or heavily restricted access to essential data. This widespread opacity, they said, creates conditions favourable to democratic backsliding, because it makes it harder to track disinformation networks, and to financial fraud, because it prevents auditing of the advertising market.
Brazil leads digital opacity
The study found that transparency among major technology companies is not voluntary but driven by legal obligations. While the European Union and the United Kingdom have stricter regulations, such as the European Union's Digital Services Act, Brazil consistently showed the lowest levels of data access among the regions analysed.
Key findings
Meta offers a "Significant" level of access to advertising data in the United Kingdom, but its transparency for user-generated content in Brazil was rated "Insignificant." The company restricts its data to its own tool, the Content Library, blocking independent large-scale analysis.
Widely used apps in Brazil, including TikTok, Kwai, WhatsApp, Discord and Threads, keep their advertising or content data classified as unavailable for public monitoring in the country.
Only Bluesky and YouTube received a consistent "Significant" rating for programmatic access, through APIs, to public content data across all the regions studied.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, content data access exists in principle, but the fees charged make independent research unfeasible, the researchers found. They also noted that most advertising repositories at major technology companies do not allow detailed keyword searches or provide precise data on who was targeted by a given advertisement.
What researchers are calling for
Given these findings, NetLab UFRJ and the University of Cambridge are calling for multisector action, including the creation of regional transparency laws in Brazil, international protocols for data interoperability, and mechanisms to reduce the gap in rights between Brazilian and European users.
