[sayonaraman]

How is giving access to user data for "research" is better than that whole data privacy scandal with Cambridge Analytica.

these days research comes with a set of politically charged assumptions, for example the definitions of "hate speech" and "misinformation" are different based on which political camp you ask

So giving access to Cambridge Analytica is bad but to some other partisan "think tank" is fine? who would make those decisions?

[moron4hire]

The government has systems in place for doing this. For example, the SBA has tons of data about small businesses across the country. You can get access to it... IF you are part of a research institution and go directly to their dedicated research facility so that you can't exfiltrate the data. Such a model is open, just not free. It would probably be the right model for this issue.