We know that the companies are big and possibly seen as monopolies, the question was still unanswered though.
Do you want your ISP tracking you and selling your private data? Do you think that is the place of an ISP?
If you do like your ISP tracking and selling your private data, we'll have to agree to disagree. I think there is no place for ISPs to be evading privacy and selling your data. It isn't about competition.
I expect tracking from free services I am not paying for that my data is the product. I expect tracking from companies that make their money from ad/marketing to do that.
I do not expect tracking and privacy invasions from my ISP, my front door to the internet.
My ISP is also not a small dog, it is a massive media company and a monopoly in addition to my provider. At least with Google/Facebook you can use DuckDuckGo/bing/etc or other social networks and block Google/Facebook if desired.
I can't route around my ISP, there is no local competition and what competition there is amounts to false competition. From the FCCs own data, most people only have 1 or maybe 2 real competitive ISPs in their area and virtually no competition at 100Mbps, zero options for gigabit [1].
I can easily walk around Google and Facebook and block them, my ISP is a big big mean dog because I am paying for my privacy invasion, services that run on the internet are corgis and they are free but fun to play so they attracted people's data by providing something people want. They do both lobby but that is primarily because ISPs and others do so heavily and you must compete at that level or lose.
> FCC report finds almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds [1]
> Even at 25Mbps, 43 percent of the US had zero ISPs or just one. [1]
[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/fcc-r...