This is something that is wholly uncovered in this whole debacle -- aggregate data (aka "anonymized" data ) is the cake beneath the icing. While Facebook et al may play nicely with regulators (and the general public) by quickly backing away from wholesale "unfiltered" data access, they can skirt the rules by providing "researchers" with anonymized data.

All of them want this anonymized data for their own analytics reporting to measure success metrics and most will walk away when the spigot is closed.

Probably, given the many past cases of academics using this kind of data to demonstrate de-anonymization attacks, with some very special vetting of who the researchers are and where their loyalties lie.

Here's a decent writeup of their first big research-related privacy blunder: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Harvards-Privacy-Meltdown/...