Axios

Facebook is used to being the cool kid. But now it’s eating lunch alone: Companies are trying to figure out how to be as un-Facebook-like as possible.  Several tech companies, including Apple, IBM and Salesforce, have publicly differentiated themselves from Facebook. Now that lawmakers are getting more interested in regulating tech, other companies are considering launching their own campaigns to stay as far away as possible from Facebook's privacy drama. 

Facebook, despite years of outreach to conservatives, remains a punching bag for the right. Facebook’s lukewarm relationship with the right has complicated its search for DC allies to help fend off new privacy regulations. On April 24, the company announced it had replaced the head of its Washington office with Kevin Martin, former Republican Federal Communications Commission chairman. Facebook is bracing for another beating — this time, from some conservatives at a hearing featuring pro-Trump video stars Diamond and Silk, who say Facebook discriminated against their content.

A member of the Justice Department's criminal division and a special agent with the FBI attended Rubicon Project's digital advertising conference, Executive Exchange to speak about the future of ad fraud and crime. FBI Special Agent Evelina Aslanyan spoke at the off-the-record event to high-level executives in the advertising industry about how ad fraud represents a whole new world of crime for publishers and consumers. Alexander Mindlin, an assistant U.S. Attorney General at the DOJ's criminal division, was also in attendance.

House Democrats plan to use the Facebook hearings as the starting point for an aggressive push for privacy legislation, which sets them up to move a bill forward if the House flips in November 2018. Democrats on the House Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over tech issues, will introduce proposals in the near term. That gives Democrats the opportunity to point to their efforts even if Republicans fail to make good on their regulatory threats.

After more than 10 hours of grilling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Congress is no closer to regulating the platform's privacy practices than it was when the hearings started. It's clear that lawmakers haven't coalesced around a regulatory end-goal, even though the threat remains.