I'll Join In On the 'Debate'

It is interesting how low journalistic or news reporting standards have dropped in recent years, and yes I feel like going that far. So many people are approaching the FCC privacy rule blocking as though it is the end of privacy on the Internet and that's like the end of the world! Back in reality though, with a bit more research and less sensationalism, we find that the rule was never in effect to begin with, which means nothing changes. There is no loss of privacy for anyone, and therefore the world is not ending and people can stop hyperventilating. Now this has been covered in some reports I have seen, often in the last few paragraphs, but there are two other points also often left to the end or left out. One is that it has been the FTC that regulates companies on how information considered private is used/sold, not the FCC. This means that by the FCC granting itself these powers, ISPs were given rules from competing bodies to deal with and navigate. Second is that the FCC can only issue rules for telecommunication companies, but those like Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. that in fact have profit models based on the collection and sale of private information, such as browser history, would have continued to be free to do with the data as they wish. For example, just yesterday my mother was looking at toasters on Amazon and then Facebook popped up an ad for a toaster. This tracking would not be affected by the rules at all, and is there a conversation or call on the FTC to block this? No, there isn't, and there also will not be, because that means the likes of Facebook and Google will either need to start charging for their various services, or collapse and no one wants that. However, ISPs that do not even collect this information to sell it, but to better target their own services, have become the Internet's privacy bogeyman. There are far bigger offenders out there, if indeed they are considered offenders, and nobody cares about them.
Why is that? My guess is because people forget the role their ISP plays in their life because it is always present, or it is not so they hate them. But Facebook they log into and check every day and they search with Google every day as well. A positive experience with Facebook and Google you notice, but a positive experience with an ISP should be invisible to you, because it means things are behaving as expected and desired. Easy to forget and easy to misunderstand. Ripe breeding grounds for people to hype a half-story into something it is not.