"Carrier" in this context(Net Neutrality) is short for telecommunications carrier, which are regulated by the FCC in the United States[1].
The classification is a legal one. It was refined by the Telecommunications Act of 1996[2]
AWS/Azure/GCE are neither regulated by the FCC nor classified as telecommunications carriers as they do not sell broadband access.
Simply owning you own "backbone" does not make you a carrier either. There are plenty of large corporations that own their own backbones that are not carriers. Being a carrier has nothing to do with hosting content either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
[2[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
No, fundamentally they(cloud providers) do not perform the same service as carriers. If I had Comcast as my ISP I could not call them up and cancel my service and then call up Amazon and say I would like to buy internet access.
Honestly, it doesn't seem like you understand how the different segments of the internet fit together - Tier 1 ISPs, last mile networks, transit, peering and service providers networks.
I need to pay the ISP or else I can not get to the services I am paying a cloud provider for. This is the whole issue. I am basically a captive consumer.
The debate has never been about classifying "cloud providers" as telecommunication carriers.
>"Legal distinctions are pointless to this discussion, because this discussion is about the appropriateness of those legal distinctions and regulations in the first place."
Legal distinctions are "pointless" in a discussion about federal oversight and regulatory jurisdiction? That is completely absurd.
Legal distinctions are absolutely material to this discussion. You can't pretend they don't exist; you need to persuade representatives and their constituents that the current legal framework is outdated and is in need of revision.