I'll take a stab at it because I think it's a useful discussion. Allowing internet companies to make contractual arrangements with their customers will result in situations similar to Google. Google shows you ads for things you are interested in, and in return you get a really great search engine for free. Similarly, if ISPs are allowed to collect information about your browsing habits, and sell it to advertisers, they will lower the monthly rates for consumers. The consumers can then choose whether they would rather pay lower rates and their ISP sells their browsing information to advertisers, or pay more.

The obvious followup is complaints about how ofter consumers don't have a choice. Perhaps the reason there is so little competition is that local municipalities enter into franchise agreements where in order to add internet to one house, you have to agree to cover the entire area. This makes it so that only big pockets and people that can influence politicians get the build an ISP. Also, we could look at access fees to explain monopoly providers. https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-ju...

If there were genuine competition perhaps real consumer preference would win out, whichever that may be. Rather than deciding how much people value privacy, perhaps we should let people choose for themselves at a level other than the federal one.

One thing that I think is being ignored and was not mentioned in the article is that the referenced regulations were passed by the FCC near the tail-end of the Obama administration and never actually went into effect. So, strictly speaking, this vote did not change ISP regulations, it just keeps them the same as they have been in the past.

> Is there another side to this debate

Yes, think of all the poor, unfortunate ISPs that are barely scraping by every year to give you your unprecedented internet bandwidth. These are small companies, owned by people who have children to feed. Selling your private data is one of the only ways they can stay out of bankruptcy. We all need to be a little more mindful of who we're hurting next time we enact this kind of draconian regulation.