Earlier quoted context omitted.
And our mistake here is not finding a way to explain it that doesn't require reading a book.
John Oliver found a good way to explain it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vuuZt7wak The problem is that ISP shills that make these decisions don't care about public opposition. They aren't elected officials.
But they do care most about making money from the public and no one has convinced me that filtering internet packages by website makes any technical, marketing, or business model sense at all.
This has proven to be incredibly unpopular idea with the public for over a decade as well, whenever it has come up in the press. It wouldn't take much market research to see it's a terrible idea.
Plus the huge technical challenge of filtering at the ISP level... this would be a huge boon for encryption and VPNs as well.
No American ISP for the ~20yr timeframe before the FTC regulation was passed a few years ago had ever offered such an arrangement. Not to mention no ISP in any other country has offered anything close to that either. Plenty of American ISPs have said they have zero intention of doing it either.
This would be a boon to any ISP who DIDN'T do this. Competition, the technical hurdles, and obvious lack of business sense, etc has always been an adequate counter-balance to this idea.
So I'm a bit confused why this is generating so much FUD over such a highly hypothetical and hand wavy scenario... as if the only thing stopping them from doing it was this three year old FTC regulation.