Facebook shares plunged Monday following revelations that a firm working for Donald Trump's presidential campaign harvested data on 50 million users, as analysts warned the social media giant's business model could be at risk.
Calls for investigations came on both sides of the Atlantic after Facebook responded to the explosive reports of misuse of its data by suspending the account of , but pushed back against the claim of a major breach, suggesting misused data was limited to a far smaller group of users.
'Huge impact'
Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University professor who studies social media, said the disclosures will increase pressure to regulate Facebook and other social media firms.
"Self-regulation is not working," Grygiel said.
"I'm wondering how bad this needs to get before our regulators step in and hold these companies accountable."
Grygiel said the breach stems from "thin" regulations that allowed Facebook and its partners to exploit data without oversight.
"They grew because of this," she said. "This was not a mistake."
Daniel Kreiss, a professor of media and communications at the University of North Carolina, said Facebook failed to live up to its responsibilities in handling targeted political ads as it expanded.
"The fact that Facebook seems to make no distinction between selling sneakers and selling a presidential platform is a deep problem," Kreiss said.
Some analysts suggested the breach posed an existential crisis for Facebook because of how it gathers and uses data on its two billion members.
David Carroll, a media professor at the New School's Parsons School of Design, said Facebook and others will soon be forced to live with new privacy rules such as those set to take effect in the European Union.
"Facebook and Google will have to ask users a lot more permission to track them," Carroll said. "Most people are going to say no, so I think it's going to have a huge impact on these companies."
Carroll has filed a legal action in Britain calling on Cambridge Analytica to disclose what data was gathered and used on him.
"If I can get them to disclose my data or my personality score, it indicates every other American has the right to the same thing," he said.
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