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Comment by mgreg | Hacker News Reader

These rules are/were certainly a step in the right direction for the protection of consumer privacy and should be saved; the attention on consumer privacy is welcome.

What's fascinating is that other online privacy areas that I would argue are much more invasive and threatening to consumer privacy are completely ignored. I'm referring, of course, to the ecosystems of Google, Facebook, the new Verizon (AOL, Yahoo), and the many other companies looking to amass as much consumer data as possible for profit.

These FCC rules feel a bit like the FCC was patting themselves on the back for fixing a drip in the bathroom faucet while ignoring the broken pipe to the water main.

From a business perspective I can also see why ISPs would be so upset about their businesses having to abide by these rules while their competitors (again, Facebook, Google, et al) are left to collect data unbridled. The all sell ads after all.

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Google, Facebook, etc., are not being ignored. They are regulated by the FTC when it comes to consumer privacy.

ISPs used to also be subject to the same rules, but when the FCC changed the classification of ISPs from information services to common carriers in order to restore the net neutrality rules that had been struck down by the courts that took them out from under FTC regulation.

The EFF discusses this on one of the linked pages[1]:

> Myth 3: The FCC’s privacy rules put Internet service providers at an unfair disadvantage when compared to Internet companies like Google who can profit off of consumers’ data.

> Fact: Google doesn’t see everything you do on the Internet (neither does Facebook, for that matter, or any other online platform)—they only see the traffic you send to them. And you can always choose to use a different website if you want to avoid Google’s tracking. None of that is true about your ISP. You probably only have one, maybe two options when it comes to ISPs offering high-speed Internet, and your ISP sees everything—they have to, in order to send your traffic to the right place. That’s why we need the FCC’s privacy rules: ISPs are in a position of power, and they’ve shown they’re willing to abuse that power.

> Plus, if you’re worried about creepy third-party tracking online, you can use free tools to protect yourself; the only way to protect your privacy from your ISP is to pay for a VPN.

> Extended Version: > To begin with, it’s worth remembering that ISPs and companies like Google or Facebook see entirely different parts of your Internet activity; namely that Google or Facebook only see the traffic you send to their servers, while ISPs see all your traffic. Even when you take into account the fact that Google and Facebook have creepy third-party trackers spread across the web, they still only see a fraction of what your ISP sees. Being able to see all of your traffic gives your ISP an unprecedented view into your life (everything from what you’re shopping for, to who you talk to, to what your politics are, to what you read), which not even Google or Facebook can achieve.

> There’s also another big difference between Comcast and Google: choice. While Internet users can choose between numerous online services for search, email, and more—including services that feature built-in privacy protections as a selling point—most consumers have few if any options when it comes to choosing an ISP. According to the FCC’s 2016 Broadband Progress Report, 51 percent of households have access to only one high-speed broadband provider. If that provider decides to sell their data, they can’t vote with their wallets and choose another ISP.

> There’s one last difference: Internet users can prevent companies like Google from spying on them as they surf the web. If you want to do something online without being tracked, you can use a variety of free tools that even powerful companies like Google cannot overcome. But nothing short of paying to use a virtual private network—essentially having to pay a fee to protect your online privacy—will protect you from your ISP.

[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/three-myths-telecom-in...

I'm familiar with these arguments but find them wanting. Trying to avoid Google and Facebook online is very difficult even for a knowledgeable, tech literate consumer. These companies collect data nearly relentlessly from non google/facebook sites through "like" buttons, analytics tools, advertising placed on 3rd party sites etc. Trying to say that one willingly and with knowledge gives up privacy to google/facebook is naive at best and deceptive if said with integrity.

One could apply the same logic to ISPs, after all. If you don't like Verizon's privacy policy you're free to switch to Comcast, or ATT. Oh - they all have the same privacy sapping policy? Too bad.

Certainly it should not be too much to ask that a "normal" non-technical internet user should feel free to roam the open internet without every click and view being tracked. I cannot expect to train my grandmother avoid google/facebook, use privacy badger and/or ublock and know what to do when her video doesn't load or play because privacy badger has blocked some adobe tracker....

This is hacker news. Let's not accept cringeworthy arguments that could have been proudly published by lobbyists for Facebook here. If this audience cannot scale higher what hope do we have for society at large? So yes, we should have regulations to limit what ISPs can track. And yes, those policies should apply to extremely large internet ecosystems as well.

It might be difficult to avoid google and others for tech illiterate users, but in some areas, there isn't the choice to use a different ISP.

Absolutely agree that there is not fierce competition in ISPs and that when they do compete it is more on price and speed than privacy so really no market driven factors to protect privacy. Of course I could offer a specious argument that there are satellite providers and dial-up so of course there's competition wink-wink.

The argument is essentially the same for Google/Facebook et al. Try telling someone who has used gmail for the last 10 years before Google altered their privacy policy for Google's benefit that if they want to keep their email private they're free to switch to Yahoo or Outlook. And that's a case where consumers have a choice. Consumers have no voice in web sites use of Google Analytics or Doubleclick. Or Facebook's like button. Or Adbobe's audience tracking....

* Fact: Google doesn’t see everything you do on the Internet

Fact 1: Google sees very huge part of the Internet traffic through AdSense and Analytics and other smaller tools like fonts, scripts etc.

Fact 2: Google has access to more detailed traffic given SSL makes most traffic (thankfully so) opaque to a ISP.

Fact 3: ISP only sees its own traffic but Google has access to the traffic from multiple ISPs.

This does not mean that we should give the same advantage to ISP, quite contrary - we should take this advantage from Google (and everyone).

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