In “Our changing information ecosystem for science and why it matters for effective science communication,” Krause et al. discuss the challenges of researching the current information environment (1). The lack of access to platform data is prominent among these challenges. We agree that data access is core to the research enterprise and that it is problematic to allow corporations to have so much power over data access (we have long argued similar things, e.g., refs. 2–4). However, we strongly disagree with the characterization of recent research (5–8) as “granting industry partners control over the coding of variables” (p. 5) or as being part of platform’s investment “into long-term research streams that claim to contradict existing scholarship on phenomena like filter bubbles, in order to absolve their platforms of responsibility for adverse effects on society or individuals” (p. 7).
NetSI authors
