Is the Facebook kerfuffle really about privacy? Or is there something more fundamental happening here? I’ve written previously about my skepticism that people really value digital privacy as much as the media or activist groups suggest they do. And if Facebook doesn’t see an exodus of users after the Cambridge Analytica maelstrom, that will be a powerful bit of evidence my instincts are correct.

Another bit of evidence is the study “How Consumers Value Digital Privacy: New Survey Evidence, Program on Economics & Privacy” by Caleb Fuller, assistant professor of economics at Grove City College and a faculty affiliate at George Mason University Law School’s Program on Economics and Privacy. After conducting a survey of 1,579 internet users, Fuller found that “85% are unwilling to pay anything for privacy on Google.” And of the 15% of Google users willing to pay, the median was around “a paltry $20 per year.”

Overall, there still seems to be great satisfaction with “the internet’s grand bargain: the exchange of free or subsidized content for personalized advertising,” as Larry Downes, project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy, writes in Harvard Business Review. And what would the internet look like if this bargain collapses due to new government data privacy regulation? Downes:

Among my takeaways from Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg’s whirlwind Washington tour is that Congress thinks the status quo is unsustainable. Of course some politicians might think the “status quo” is the data privacy reality before the pre-Cambridge Analytica scandal. But the social media platform has announced a number of steps to tighten things up since then.

Yet none of those voluntary measures will stop legislators from trying to push new rules on Facebook. As Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, told Zuckerberg:

Here’s what’s going to happen — there are going to be a whole bunch of bills introduced to regulate Facebook. It’s up to you whether they pass or not. You can go back home [and] spend $10 million on lobbyists and fight us, or you can go back home and help us solve this problem.