# Congress okays ISP to sell your browsing history **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 30, 2017, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345 "2017-03-30T13:51:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/21 "2017-03-30T18:55:43Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > What specific cases? What data could be treated differently? And why? Briefly, I think there are two obvious cases. 1. I think it’s fine for a website to pay for data for their service to customers. This lets Wikipedia provide free Wikipedia access to impoverished people around the world, which I see as a great thing. It also lets Facebook provide free facebook to people around the world, which I see as kind of a bad thing, but not one worthy of banning. But ultimately, I don’t see why this should be banned. My analogy for this is free shipping. The post office is a common carrier, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t allow companies that ship things to pay for the shipping costs to their customers. Does this make it harder for smaller companies that don’t have the logistics or economies of scale to compete with Amazon? Sure. But so what? France, by the way, banned Amazon from providing free shipping because it was competing too effectively with local bookshops. That is not the regulatory world I want to live in with the internet. 1. I think it’s fine to have different quality of service levels for different data. Video calls, for example, needs a short path and high bandwidth more than does a video stream, which in turn needs more than email, and so on down the line. Designing a network so that _all_ services are supported at the level that the most demanding service requires is either wasteful since it’s over-engineered, or more likely (what we have right now), the low-priority services sometimes preempt the high-priority services and the high-priority services don’t actually work very well. There are ways to allow both of these things that don’t open the floodgates for the sort of nasty behavior we actually want to prevent, like artificially slowing competitors’ services or letting certain companies become gatekeepers for who gets to do something on the internet. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/22 "2017-03-30T19:01:05Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Net Neutrality is basically just the concept that everyone that touches data shouldn’t do any more with it than check to see where it’s going and send it on it’s way, period. People against it argue that anyone that handles data (namely ISPs) should be able to do what they want with the data. For the majority of people what this comes down to is that you can get a 20mbps connection and everything will be perfect. You’ll be able to play games with your friends, everyone in your house can stream youtube and vimeo at the same time, but Netflix will never _quite_ work. You’ll always feel like the picture could be better or maybe you never quite get through an entire show or movie with out it stopping to buffer. The reason being that they’re throttling the connection in hopes that you use their on demand selection instead OR that Netflix gives in and pays them to stop. > > TLDR, Net Neutrality states that all data is treated equally, without it, an ISP gets to choose based on anything (including bribes/pay for play) which data gets priority. > > What’s being discussed above isn’t net neutrality. I don’t know if it has a name, but it’s not that. > > [Net neutrality - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality) On the other hand, the bad situation you describe is very similar to what I experience now. My landlord provides wi-fi for my house, but it isn’t quite fast enough for the number of users. Without net neutrality, I suspect my Netflix would work better (because both Netflix and the ISP benefit from coming to some kind of an agreement to prioritize Netflix streaming), while my neighbor downloading illegal torrents and porn (It’s my neighbor, I’m telling you!) would be throttled. In the end, it seems to me that ending net neutrality benefits existing big players who have the capital and the clout to negotiate good deals, and shuts out smaller players, start-ups, and non-corporate open-source-philosophy systems like torrents. That’s a harm, to be sure, but not one that gets me as a consumer all that het up. I’m not even sure it wouldn’t benefit me individually, as someone who relies more on Netflix and Amazon than other sources. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/23 "2017-03-30T19:11:30Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > To be fair, there are those of us who think that Net Neutrality goes to far, and that there are some specific cases in which ISPs, various websites, and end users ought to be able to treat some data differently than other data. > . I like this idea. I would like to see it expanded to water companies being able to treat (heh) some water differently than other water. If you pay for the deluxe American Family Safety Water bundle you get micro-organisms filtered out. If not, well… ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/24 "2017-03-30T19:17:37Z")
> [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > I like this idea. I would like to see it expanded to water companies being able to treat (heh) some water differently than other water. If you pay for the deluxe American Family Safety Water bundle you get micro-organisms filtered out. If not, well… You mean like, say, using grey water to flush toilets, instead of drinking water? Which, by the way, most plumbing codes prohibit, even in places where we have chronic water shortages. Nice strawman, though. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/25 "2017-03-30T19:25:39Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > Briefly, I think there are two obvious cases. > > 1. I think it’s fine for a website to pay for data for their service to customers. This lets Wikipedia provide free Wikipedia access to impoverished people around the world, which I see as a great thing. It also lets Facebook provide free facebook to people around the world, which I see as kind of a bad thing, but not one worthy of banning. But ultimately, I don’t see why this should be banned. > > My analogy for this is free shipping. The post office is a common carrier, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t allow companies that ship things to pay for the shipping costs to their customers. This is not a good analogy. The post office doesn’t care whether a business offers to pay shipping cost or not. They just deliver the package. A more accurate analogy is the post office is the ISP and the “free-shipping businesses” are the content providers on the internet. It’s fine if Netflix or Hulu offer various incentives to get you to buy their product. Maybe a 1-year free subscription or something (analogous to Amazon paying for free shipping). It is not fine for them to pay off an ISP to throttle competing content providers data. It’s fine if Amazon offers free shipping as an incentive. It is not fine if they pay off the post office to throttle the delivery of competing companies packages. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/26 "2017-03-30T19:42:07Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > How long will it be until some elected official is claiming to have been hacked because they would never [insert unsavory thing here]? > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > Briefly, I think there are two obvious cases. > > 1. I think it’s fine for a website to pay for data for their service to customers. This lets Wikipedia provide free Wikipedia access to impoverished people around the world, which I see as a great thing. It also lets Facebook provide free facebook to people around the world, which I see as kind of a bad thing, but not one worthy of banning. But ultimately, I don’t see why this should be banned. > > My analogy for this is free shipping. The post office is a common carrier, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t allow companies that ship things to pay for the shipping costs to their customers. My mailbox is actually not all that big. As it is a finite resource, could amazon pay USPS not to deliver, or at least deprioritized packages from Etsy coming to my mailbox? I find that that is a much closer analogy. Well, it would be closer if USPS could also look inside of my packages, and sell that information. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/27 "2017-03-30T21:30:26Z")
> [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > It’s fine if Amazon offers free shipping as an incentive. It is not fine if they pay off the post office to throttle the delivery of competing companies packages. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > My mailbox is actually not all that big. As it is a finite resource, could amazon pay USPS not to deliver, or at least deprioritized packages from Etsy coming to my mailbox? Did you read the end of my post? We can and should have regulations that prohibit that sort of thing. But current Net Neutrality proposals would prevent exactly the cases I suggested, of a content producer paying for their customers to receive content, even if they did not in any way disrupt the ability of those customers to connect to other websites. Which is why I think those proposals go too far. I don’t think we should have _no_ regulation. I think that proposed net neutrality principles are more restrictive than is optimal. Let me direct you back to > [@iamthewalrus(:3=](#): > > It’s a nuanced point, but there are plenty of positions between “all bits are equal” and “corporate shill”. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/28 "2017-03-30T21:48:04Z")
Something to note about this action: The stated driver from the GOP perspective is that the FCC assumed control of an area the GOP feels should be handled by the FTC. The FCC did this by voting to classify IPS’s as common carriers which the FTC can’t regulate, and then began creating rules like this one that is getting nixed. If this is the true motive, then the GOP would need to change something so the FTC can then create these types of rules. But maybe they just want to enable commerce via ads/marketing. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/29 "2017-03-30T22:00:49Z")
> [@Okrahoma](#): > > I am sure there will be great demand for ISP plans that will offer “we do not ever save your browsing history” for an extra $10/mo. > > Do you think there will be such demand? I very much doubt it (though I am sure it will be offered). I doubt it will be offered. It will just remind people that they can use a VPN for much less or install free browser based VPNs such as Hola. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/30 "2017-03-30T22:46:29Z")
I’m more freaked that our App data can be sold too. Most of us are used to software on PC’s. How and when we use it is our business. That’s not true with Apps. Google knows exactly when you open one. It’s all in your myactivity.google history. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2017, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/31 "2017-03-31T14:43:04Z")
> [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > This is not a good analogy. The post office doesn’t care whether a business offers to pay shipping cost or not. They just deliver the package. A more accurate analogy is the post office is the ISP and the “free-shipping businesses” are the content providers on the internet. > > It’s fine if Netflix or Hulu offer various incentives to get you to buy their product. Maybe a 1-year free subscription or something (analogous to Amazon paying for free shipping). It is not fine for them to pay off an ISP to throttle competing content providers data. > > It’s fine if Amazon offers free shipping as an incentive. It is not fine if they pay off the post office to throttle the delivery of competing companies packages. I like the post office analogy, but tweaked just a bit. The post office does not treat all mail equally. For 49 cents, they will deliver a letter for you in a few days. For a few dollars, they will deliver a package in 5 business days. For a few dollars more, they offer 2 day delivery, and for a few dollars more than that they will deliver overnight. So when I and half a million other people get “free 2-day shipping” from Amazon, that’s because Amazon pays the USPS to deliver their packages overnight (also because I paid Amazon $99 for my “free” shipping). A small startup company can’t make the same offer to their customers because they simply can’t afford the cost. Amazon doesn’t need to pay the USPS to “throttle” deliveries from their competitors; the USPS basically does that for them as part of their business model. Yet small companies continue to stay in business, by offering their customers something of value other than “free 2-day shipping”. I suspect that if net neutrality were permanently banned, we would all grumble and moan for a while, then life would settle down and we’d all get along just fine. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2017, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/32 "2017-03-31T15:03:06Z")
I assume the Kremlin will have the fee waived if they want your history. I don’t think anyone should have any expectation of privacy when using the internet. Someone, somewhere is tracking your every visit. If they can make a buck off of selling your history, they will. Far be it from this administration and this congress to prevent mega-corporations from making money by whatever means necessary. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2017, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/33 "2017-03-31T17:17:21Z")
The post office analogy is a _great_ analogy. Just because it’s not perfectly parallel in every way doesn’t make it bad. There’s no such thing as a _perfect_ analogy, since if two things were actually identical, it wouldn’t be useful to analogize between them anyway. And, yes, I acknowledge that there are technical differences between mail delivery and packet routing where the analogy will not hold. But you can easily use the analogy to reason about whether regulations make sense: Is it reasonable for the post office to have different rates for different delivery speeds? Yes. Might it make sense for some packages to be delivered more quickly at high cost, and for others to be delivered more slowly at lower cost? Yes. Is it reasonable for the post office to enter into an agreement with one shipper where they only offer high speed to that shipper and artificially delay other shippers’ packages? Absolutely not. Should everyone have access to the post office at fair and publicly published rates? Yes. Is it reasonable to let either the shipper or the receiver to pay for delivery? Yes. I think all of these are directly applicable to the internet. For those saying it’s a bad analogy, please provide some examples of parallel analogous questions for the post office/ISP that have different answers. I suspect you will have to go fairly deep into technical corner cases to do so (though I’m willing to be shown otherwise). ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2017, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/34 "2017-03-31T17:37:25Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > The post office analogy is a _great_ analogy. Just because it’s not perfectly parallel in every way doesn’t make it bad. There’s no such thing as a _perfect_ analogy, since if two things were actually identical, it wouldn’t be useful to analogize between them anyway. And, yes, I acknowledge that there are technical differences between mail delivery and packet routing where the analogy will not hold. > > But you can easily use the analogy to reason about whether regulations make sense: > > Is it reasonable for the post office to have different rates for different delivery speeds? Yes. > > Might it make sense for some packages to be delivered more quickly at high cost, and for others to be delivered more slowly at lower cost? Yes. > > Is it reasonable for the post office to enter into an agreement with one shipper where they only offer high speed to that shipper and artificially delay other shippers’ packages? Absolutely not. > > Should everyone have access to the post office at fair and publicly published rates? Yes. > > Is it reasonable to let either the shipper or the receiver to pay for delivery? Yes. > > I think all of these are directly applicable to the internet. > > For those saying it’s a bad analogy, please provide some examples of parallel analogous questions for the post office/ISP that have different answers. I suspect you will have to go fairly deep into technical corner cases to do so (though I’m willing to be shown otherwise). One major issue I have with that analogy is that having a post box on my house does not make me a customer of the USPS. Only if I am sending mail am I a customer. Only if I am sending mail do I need to pay for access. So, in a large sense, only the people who are sending mail are USPS’s customers, and anyone just receiving mail at their house is not. Access to the mail system if free. With an ISP, I am paying them for that access. I am paying them to deliver content to my home. I am a customer of theirs whether I am sending or receiving bits, or even if I have my computer offline. For them to now take on another customer, a customer who may have different priorities than I have, a customer who may in fact cause my service that I am paying for to be affected negatively, creates an interesting conflict of interest. Now, if we want to create a situation where broadband internet service is free to the end user, and the costs are supported by content providers paying ISPs to carry their content, that would be a very complicated model, and I don’t think that it would work very well, but at least then it would be clear who their customers were, and where their priorities lay. This is all, of course, in addition to the privacy aspects of net neutrality. The USPS cannot sell information about your correspondence to advertisers, and absolutely cannot open up your mail to see what the content is, and sell that information to advertisers. ISPs can do both of these things. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2017, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/35 "2017-03-31T18:15:56Z")
> [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > The post office does not treat all mail equally. For 49 cents, they will deliver a letter for you in a few days. For a few dollars, they will deliver a package in 5 business days. For a few dollars more, they offer 2 day delivery, and for a few dollars more than that they will deliver overnight. That’s an analogy for ISPs offering various connection speeds at corresponding prices, which everybody accepts as perfectly normal and reasonable. The analogy that would apply to net neutrality would be the post office delivering Amazon packages right away and letting Etsy packages sit in the back room for a day or two because Amazon paid them (in addition to the standard shipping cost) and Etsy didn’t. For some ISPs (those which are also content providers, i.e. cable/internet companies), a better analogy would be if the post office ran its own mail-order business and delivered those packages right away and let everybody else’s sit in the back room. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/36 "2017-03-31T18:30:12Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > One major issue I have with that analogy is that having a post box on my house does not make me a customer of the USPS. Only if I am sending mail am I a customer. Only if I am sending mail do I need to pay for access. So, in a large sense, only the people who are sending mail are USPS’s customers, and anyone just receiving mail at their house is not. Access to the mail system if free. This is an interesting distinction, although I’m not sure how or if it breaks the usefulness of the analogy. Can you come up with a proposed internet/post regulation that ought to have different answers because of this distinction? > [@](#): > > For them to now take on another customer, a customer who may have different priorities than I have, a customer who may in fact cause my service that I am paying for to be affected negatively, creates an interesting conflict of interest. I think that conflict exists with the post office too, we just don’t really notice it, or we don’t think that the service degradation is important. For example, adding more postal customers may result in re-configuration of routes, which might result in your mail being delivered later in the day. That’s clearly a degradation of service. If enough new customers get added elsewhere, the post office may have to shift employees around, which might result in your mail delivery being delayed by even longer. If enough new customers get added, the post office has to hire new employees. New employees are probably not as good as experienced ones, which will result in more lost and misdelivered mail. Etc. The post office makes relatively weak guarantees about delivery of most mail, which allows them lots of logistical flexibility to do these things anyway, but changing who pays for mail doesn’t fix potential network effects. > [@](#): > > This is all, of course, in addition to the privacy aspects of net neutrality. The USPS cannot sell information about your correspondence to advertisers, and absolutely cannot open up your mail to see what the content is, and sell that information to advertisers. ISPs can do both of these things. Yes, but I think we both agree that ISPs _shouldn’t be able to do these things_. The usefulness of the post office analogy is that it gives us insight on how we ought to regulate ISPs. It does not give us much insight on how they are currently regulated. Perhaps that’s the point I failed to communicate well that caused people to dislike the analogy. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2017, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/37 "2017-03-31T18:45:19Z")
These analogies are not helpful in the slightest, sorry. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2017, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345/38 "2017-03-31T20:05:50Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > That’s an analogy for ISPs offering various connection speeds at corresponding prices, which everybody accepts as perfectly normal and reasonable. The analogy that would apply to net neutrality would be the post office delivering Amazon packages right away and letting Etsy packages sit in the back room for a day or two because Amazon paid them (in addition to the standard shipping cost) and Etsy didn’t. For some ISPs (those which are also content providers, i.e. cable/internet companies), a better analogy would be if the post office ran its own mail-order business and delivered those packages right away and let everybody else’s sit in the back room. There is no difference between your good and bad scenarios. You say that everyone agrees that it is okay to charge various prices for different speeds. In your example the post office is charging Amazon for a faster speed than Etsy. The hypothetical danger is that this faster speed allows Amazon on monopoly on delivered goods. The problem is that if Etsy is so concerned about Amazon’s products being shipped faster, they can pay too. It is highly unlikely that one producer can afford to pay an ISP enough money to throttle everyone else’s data. Some of us are old enough to remember before Fedex and UPS when deliveries were normally 4-6 weeks. Then companies jumped in and built infrastructure that allows overnight and 2 day delivery. Because of that unless you are ordering from China everything comes faster than it used to. If Netflix and Amazon are allowed to pay ISPs for higher speeds the ISPs will then be able to build faster infrastructure and everyone’s speeds will get higher. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/congress-okays-isp-to-sell-your-browsing-history/783345.md?page=1)