Following the vote by the Senate, the US House of Representatives voted to prevent the previously agreed-on privacy rules from taking effect. After president Trump signs the legislation, it will allow ISPs to sell browsing history data of their users to advertisers without consent, the Guardian reported.

FCC’s former chairman Tom Wheeler said that in his view, “digital tracks that a consumer leaves when using a network are the property of that consumer”, while Republicans have argued that the data should be available for the ISPs to sell.

Amit Pai, FCC’s current chairman who was picked by president Trump, is a vocal critic of many regulations that govern the internet, especially net neutrality. According to the Financial Times, a bigger battle over the existing net neutrality rules is likely to follow. This could provoke a major rebellion over the rollback – last time net neutrality was threatened in the US, a large grass roots movement rose up to support it.