When Facebook Inc. FB 0.49% in 2018 agreed for the first time to let a select group of academics study internal data about how content gets shared on its platform, it was billed as a breakthrough for understanding the social network’s impact on society.

Researchers at the time said they expected to get a functional data set within two months. It instead took closer to two years.

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“When this project began, we thought the political and legal aspects of our job were over,” said Gary King and Nathaniel Persily, professors at Harvard University and Stanford University, respectively, who are leading the project. “In fact, most of the last twenty months has involved negotiating with Facebook,” they said in an announcement of the data release.

In an interview, Mr. Persily praised Facebook’s willingness to undertake the effort and said he hoped other tech giants would follow suit. But he said he believes governments will eventually need to force internet platforms to make data available for research.

“The lawyers inside the firms are overcorrecting,” he said.

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“The urgency of this research cannot be overstated,” Messrs. King and Persily wrote in an announcement posted on Social Science One’s website last April. “We believe we can provide the fuel in the form of data access to the scholarly community to help solve some of the major issues in social media that affect elections and democracy across the world.”