During the Fall 2025 semester, ASML partnered with Boston University’s Spark! Program—an innovation and experiential learning hub within the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences—as a client for their Data Visualization course (DS594). Working alongside ASML Software Engineer Teagan D’Addeo, Principal Software Engineer Zoe Robert, and Senior Program Manager Kalie Mayberry, a talented team of BU students developed their own Policy Analytics Dashboard built on the data within ASML’s Transparency Hub—a platform tracking 738 different policies across 332 different social platforms with a total of 21,703 files.
Built in collaboration with ASML’s Transparency Hub, the dashboard analyzes more than 15,000 social media policy documents spanning 2002–2025. It visualizes differences in readability, complexity, and style between “old school” platforms launched before 2010, such as Facebook and Twitter, and “new school” platforms like TikTok and Discord. Through eight analytical-focused research questions, the dashboard enables users to explore how platforms structure policies around user rights, including mandatory arbitration clauses and class action waivers. These visualizations reveal how widespread such restrictive clauses have become, frequently limiting users’ access to courts, jury trials, and collective legal action.
Key insights from the analysis underscore the imbalance of power embedded in platform policies: approximately 86% require college-level reading proficiency, only 37% clearly acknowledge opt-in or opt-out consent, and among policies with arbitration clauses, 74% use the most restrictive forms. By transforming dense legal text into accessible, interactive visuals, the dashboard makes visible how platform policies shape user autonomy, accountability, and digital rights.
Privacy policies are not just legal formalities: they are instruments that govern how power operates online. This project demonstrates how data visualization and public-interest technology can help social media users, researchers, and policymakers better understand the rights they’re asked to give up.
The BU Spark! student team, including Kevin Wrenn, Alicia Cao, Jessica Cannon, and Andrew Ting, was supported by Polly Peng as Project Manager and Harini Saravanan as Technical Project Manager. Their work culminated in a poster showcase as part of the ASML 2025 Synthesizer, as well as a poster showcase and stage presentation at the BU Spark! Demo Day, where the team sparked thoughtful conversations with researchers, technologists, and practitioners. We are grateful to the BU Spark! team for their thoughtful collaboration and excited about the role this work can play in advancing transparency across digital ecosystems.
You can explore the dashboard here.
Importantly, ASML will be launching Transparency Hub on March 4, 2026 at 11am ET, where we will share how you can get access to nearly 22,000 policy files across 332 different platforms. We invite you to join us to learn more about what we have built and how we hope others will continue to build new research and insights from this outline.
