[nobody9999]

>I'm going to agree with the parent comment: The question of ISPs being a public utility or not is crucial for this discussion because it goes to the core of the issue of what should be a privilege and what should be a right.

I'd go further than that. Requiring ISPs to be dumb pipes (that means no port blocking or throttling, among other things) can reduce the power and influence of the large social media players by making it easier to host your own data[0][1][2] and share what you want with whom you want.

No middlemen, no abusive data mining/tracking, etc.

But doing so requires that ISPs are not gatekeepers, just suppliers of bandwidth/routing.

[0] https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Installation_guides

[1] https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/

[2] https://awesomeopensource.com/projects/activitypub