After two days of hearings on Capitol Hill, the consensus is that marketers will stick with Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg held his own, regulation of some sort[1] is likely and the overall business impact to the social networking giant will be minimal.
Speaking at his second hearing in two days before Congress Wednesday, Zuckerberg emphasized many of the points before a House committee that he made with Senators on Tuesday[2].
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) pestered Zuckerberg on creating more default privacy settings from the beginning. "This is a complex issue that deserves more than a one word answer," said Zuckerberg.
Read more: Trump-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested data on 50 million Facebook profiles to help target voters | Data breach exposes Cambridge Analytica's data mining tools | How Cambridge Analytica used your Facebook data to help elect Trump[3][4][5]
Pallone, who admitted he had little faith in corporations, continued to hone in on the consumer data privacy by default issue. "People aren't empowered enough," said Pallone.
The common thread through both hearings could be summed up as data as currency. Consumers don't pay money these days when dealing with Facebook, Google or other Internet players. They pay with their personal data.
Cambridge Analytica and all the Facebook that followed just put the spotlight on the data as currency reality. Legislators talked opt-in vs. opt-out and over two days highlighted how technology clueless they were at points.
What'll change? Probably not much. The bet is Facebook will remain a monetization machine, according to Wall Street analysts. Evercore ISI analyst Anthony DiClemente said in a research note:
Mark Zuckerberg's roughly five hours of testimony yesterday