QRE 26.1.1
Relevant Signatories will describe the tools and processes in place to provide public access to non-personal data and anonymised, aggregated and manifestly-made public data pertinent to undertaking research on Disinformation, as well as the safeguards in place to address risks of abuse.
Bing and Microsoft are dedicated to supporting the research community and regularly provide information and data to the research community in a variety of ways.
Consistent with the EU’s CoCD and the Digital Services Act (DSA) regulation, researchers may request data from Bing. Bing uses the same intake process for both CoCD and DSA research requests. Researchers may easily request access for publicly accessible Bing data through Bing’s
Qualified Researcher Program (aligned with DSA Article 40(12)) and
resources for researchers seeking access to datasets (aligned with DSA Article 40(4)). However, because these datasets are already available open-source (see below), some researchers may elect to obtain datasets via the below means to avoid the burden of an application and credentialing process.
Bing also offers use of
Bing APIs to the public, referred to as “Grounding with Bing”. These APIs are offered for less than 15 Euros for up to 1,000 transactions per month, which may be leveraged by the research community.
Researchers who are registered webmasters may utilize Bing’s
Keyword research and
Backlinks Webmaster Tools to provide insights into search usage and keywords. Bing is working on ways to provide deeper research access to the tool across the research community and looks forward to providing more information as it is available.
