1. It's not necessarily different. Your ISP has monopolistic power over you, and it should be regulated more aggressively.
2. A non-mobile ISP is currently much less important than an Apple/Google account for interacting with modern society, and less important than it was even a decade ago. If all 1.5 of my available home ISPs turned evil I could manage just fine without them.
3. Given the relative public perceptions this feels weird to say, but Comcast and their ilk are much less problematic than the Apple/Google monopolies. You can largely just pay for internet (plus an extra 10-40% from scammy business practices) and do whatever you want to do, with the analytics they're selling about you being less invasive than those which Apple/Google use.
Your ISP is an utility, it doesn't hold your de-facto identity.
Google and Apple increasingly become the entity required to identify yourself, either directly ("login with Google/Apple to participate") or indirectly ("use our App on iOS/Android to confirm your identity and participate")
My apartment, smack bang in the middle of Manhattan, has a single coax cable opened by Spectrum, and is the only option for me to get reliable internet connection. I have no choice but to (1) sign whatever their ToS are, (2) pay whatever they want to charge, and (3) have them do what they want with my metadata. I’ve decided it’s not the hill I want to die on, but no, I don’t have many ISPs to choose from.
You have at very least:
* Mobile connection, a few carriers
* Starlink/Eutelsat
It's not perfect, but nowhere near Google/Apple duopoly. Also this is very local US issue, solvable on city level regulation, while smartphones are everywhere.
You also have the option to move. I mean, that's not ideal, obviously you don't want to have people up and change addresses to deal with a problem with a single company, but if you end up on both Google and Apple's shitlists, there's nowhere you can go to where Schmapple is a third option.
>Might only be available in Europe & Africa though.
Yep. We just need to move Manhattan there. Problem solved.
It's crazy how some people think there's no solution when the solution is "clear as an unmuddied lake...As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer."[0]
Depending on where you live, a lot of times you don’t many to choose from. Maybe 2-3, but sometimes only one with fast enough speeds that it becomes the only option.
Even in places without those, there are a ton of little hamlets in BFE around me that have one guy that gets fiber from wherever is cheapest, then runs a point-to-point directional antenna relay system to a home-brew ISP.
No one is arguing for using ISP-hosted accounts as an alternative.
The core problem isn't even rooted in identity per se, it's about platform owners actively working to limit access to essential information from platforms they cannot profit from.
Even granting the most cherubic motives, this ongoing behavior is atrocious on it's face and should be prevented by any means, including competition, rule making and legislation.
