The FTC did regulate ISPs, until they sued AT&T over their "unlimited" claims and lost in appeal. In losing, they actually lost the ability to regulate ISPs at all. AT&T wanted this. Here's the ruling: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/08/29/1...

Seeing this coming, FCC proposed privacy rules around the same time: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-16-39A1_Rc...

Which did go into effect on January 3rd: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-28...

Among the privacy requirements, there are also mandatory breach notifications.

The industry's response is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2017/0... . They complained about the breach requirements, and also claimed the difference between them being opt-in for advertising profiling vs Google et al being opt-out violated their First Amendment rights.

A coalition of Internet advertisers filed a similar response: http://ana.net/getfile/24564 . Here, they claim another First Amendment conflict with: "The creation, analysis, and transfer of consumer data for marketing purposes constitutes speech"

So yes, please dig deeper. This is a year-long end to a battle that AT&T successfully opened up in their appeal. It's over; the ISPs won, at the expense of individual American privacy.