"The legal papers include an affidavit from Princeton University's privacy expert and computer scientist Jonathan Mayer, who argues that broadband providers often have more information about consumers than other types of online companies.
“A typical online service only observes how consumers interact with the service itself,” he writes. “ISPs, by comparison, have access to a wide breadth of information about what consumers do online -- with a perspective that spans websites, applications, and devices.”
“There are only a handful of technology giants (e.g., Google and Facebook) that have broad visibility into a consumer’s activities across diverse online contexts,” Mayer adds. “And even then, there are numerous distinctions between the technical capabilities of ISPs and those of the technology giants.”"