We explore what happens when Europe’s ambitious data access laws meet the messy realities of studying major digital platforms. Using YouTube as a central case, we show how the European Union’s efforts to promote transparency through the GDPR, the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) are reshaping the possibilities and limits of independent platform research. At the heart of the discussion is a paradox: while these laws promise unprecedented access to the data that shape our digital lives, the information researchers and citizens actually receive is often incomplete, inconsistent, and difficult to interpret. In this talk, we take a close look at data donations from over a thousand Danish YouTube users, which at first glance did not reveal neat insights but sprawling file structures filled with cryptic data points.