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As federal lawmakers continue to look for ways to regulate Big Tech, the industry continues to deny the gravity of popularized problems like privacy and technology addiction.

At a hearing hosted by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) grilled Google over its alleged use of “persuasive technology.”

Persuasive technology is “the idea that computers, mobile phones, websites, and other technologies could be designed to influence people’s behavior and even attitudes,” according to Nanette Byrnes at MIT Technology Review, who wrote in 2015 that “many companies are using technologies that measure customer behavior to design products that are not just persuasive but specifically aimed at forging new habits.”

In the committee hearing, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said he planned to use the hearing to inform legislation “to require internet platforms to give consumers the option to engage w/the platform without having the experience shaped by algorithms.”

“As online content continues to grow, online companies rely increasingly on artificial intelligence (AI) powered automations to display content to optimize engagement. Unfortunately the use of AI algorithms can have an unintended and possibly even dangerous downside,” Thune said, referencing recent news reports from Bloomberg and The New York Times revealing how YouTube “chased” engagement and clicks rather than protecting users by recommending a video of children playing in a pool to users who had been watching sexually explicit videos.

Senators drilled down on how tech giants who rely on algorithms to curate content negatively impact users and American civic engagement as a whole. As several witnesses explained, because algorithms determine so many tech giants’ decisions to take down or promote content, Big Tech absconds responsibility for negative results — like political polarization or censorship.

“Silicon Valley has a premise, that society would be better–more efficient, smarter, more frictionless–if we eliminate steps of human judgment,” Schatz said. “But computers recommended these awful videos in the first place. Companies are letting these algorithms run wild and are leaving humans to clean up the mess. Algorithms are amoral. They eliminate human judgment as part of their business models. We need them to be more transparent and companies need to be more accountable about the outcomes they produce.”

Tristan Harris, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Humane Technology, told senators this phenomenon is “not happening by accident, it’s happening by design.”

“In the race of attention, companies have to get more of it by becoming more and more effective,” he said. “Companies compete on whose algorithms more accurately predict what will keep users there the longest. Because YouTube wants to maximize watch time, it tilts the entire ant colony of humanity towards crazytown.”

For example, he said, YouTube recommended anorexia videos to teenage girls who watched “diet” videos on the platform.

Maggie Stanphill, director of the Google User Experience at Google, used her testimony to describe Google’s commitment to the wellbeing of its users and repeated the company’s claim that its core values are privacy, transparency, and user control.

“We believe technology should play a helpful, useful role in all people’s lives, and we’re committed to helping everyone strike a balance that feels right for them,” she said. “This is why last year, as a result of extensive research and investigation, we introduced our Digital Wellbeing Initiative: a set of principles that resulted in tools and features to help people find their own sense of balance. Many experts recommend self-awareness and reflection as an essential step in creating a balance with technology.”

Some of the ways this initiative helps Google users is by initiating “Do Not Disturb” and “Wind Down” functions on Android phones (which Apple also provides on iPhones), which help to limit blue light emissions (which can disrupt sleep and damage skin) and phone use so that users can disconnect in a healthy way.

On YouTube, Stanphill said, Google provides opt-in “Take a Break” reminders for those who have been watching videos for extended periods of time.

At a Hoover Institution event in May, tech experts and tech industry members discussed how Google favors its own in-house products, directs users toward the Google experience and tries to keep them there as long as possible because it profits Google by providing the company with more user data to enhance its products and share with advertisers.

Schatz pointed out at the hearing that, because lawmakers only have limited anecdotal and circumstantial evidence about how tech giants use their algorithms, they want more transparency.

When Schatz asked Stanphill if Google uses persuasive technology to keep users using Google products as much as possible, Stanphill said, “We do not use persuasive technology.”

Schatz then asked, “Mr. Harris, is that true?”

Harris said it’s complicated.

“Dark patterns are not core to the whole family of companies, including YouTube,” Stanphill said. “We build our products with privacy, transparency and control for the users, and we build a lifelong relationship with the user, which is primary. That’s our trust.”

To which Schatz replied, “I don’t understand what any of that meant.”

According to Harris, the problem isn’t so much the algorithms themselves as it is the lack of accountability and transparency behind them, which may require regulation.

“The founder of Netscape said software is going to eat the world,” Harris said. “What he meant by that was, software can do everything more efficiently. So we’re going to let it eat up our elections, our health, our transportation, our media…and the problem was, it was eating the world without taking responsibility for it.”

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A Senate committee advanced the nominations Wednesday of three Trump administration Federal Communications Commission appointees, including one controversial vote to approve a Republican FCC nominee to two terms.

Senators on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee voted without objection to renominate former Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and nominate Brendan Carr, currently the agency’s general counsel and a former staffer in Republican Chairman Ajit Pai’s office.

Rosenworcel was forced to vacate her seat in December after Senate Republicans — concerned former Democratic Chairman Tom Wheeler might not leave with the Obama administration — refused to vote on her renomination. Wheeler stepped down in January, as is customary in a new administration, and President Donald Trump nominated Carr to finish out his term ending in June 2018, giving the FCC a two-Democrat, three-Republican majority.

But Wednesday’s vote wasn’t without drama. Pai, also up for renomination, received mostly nay votes from Democrats over his pending plan to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules, scoring renomination thanks to the committee’s 14 Republican majority.

Consensus all but evaporated when Republicans proposed to nominate Carr to another term after finishing Wheeler’s in June 2018, upsetting the tradition of pairing one Democrat with one Republican at the same time, in order to pass them without objection from either side.

Beyond breaking precedent, Democrats argued that because Commissioner Mignon Clyburn — the FCC’s only sitting Democrat — is nearing the end of her term and hasn’t decided whether to seek renomination, Republicans should wait to renominate Carr until there’s a Democrat to pair with him.

“Otherwise Mr. Carr will have received a term that will run six and a half years,” Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey said. “There would be no one to pair the new Democratic nominee with, and it would create something that was ahistorical.”

Ranking Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida noted that Carr would still be able to serve after his term expires in June 2018 until January 2019, based on agency rules that let sitting commissioners stay until the end of the current congressional session if they haven’t been renominated.

“So if we got into a situation that suddenly, the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not want [to vote in a Democrat], and Mignon Clyburn vacated the seat, we would have a three to one [Republican to Democrat] when in fact, the commission is supposed to be three to two,” Nelson said.

The same situation happened last year when McConnell refused hold a floor vote to nominate Rosenworcel, who’d already been approved by the committee. At the time, Republicans blamed Wheeler’s reluctance to announce a firm departure date following Trump’s election win (some speculated Wheeler would stay on through the end of his term to block Trump’s ability to appoint a Republican majority at the agency).

Nelson added it was his understanding that McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are working on a deal to package multiple Trump nominees into a floor vote, and that Carr’s nomination for only a single term would be included.

“Clearly there is no precedent for a second term being this long, of which you would throw the entire balance of the FCC, for which it was intended, out of whack if the majority leader did not allow the second minority vacancy to be filled,” he said.

Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell said she was opposed to two terms because of Carr himself. During a hearing in July, Cantwell questioned if Carr would be willing to break from the influence of Pai, his former boss, on pivotal agency votes.

“Mr. Carr is a former staffer of Ajit Pai’s, I want to make sure that as he gets on the commission, that he’s going to express his independent views,” Cantwell said. “So I would like to talk to him again after some length of time on the FCC.”

“I don’t trust the guy,” Cantwell later remarked in a hot-mic moment.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who chairs the committee on commerce, argued that a Clinton FCC appointee was nominated to two terms in 1997. Markey later pointed out that nominee was paired with a Republican FCC appointee.

The committee voted 14-13 to approve Carr for two terms, with all Republicans voting for and all Democrats against.

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A powerful Republican in the Senate’s telecommunications policy committee is the latest lawmaker to signal Congress will take up net neutrality in the wake of a possible Federal Communications Commission repeal, action Republicans hope will bring Democrats to the table.

South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune said he’s “committed to the cause” of net neutrality, and suggested the threat of the newly-Republican controlled FCC repealing the rules may convince Democrats to get on board with a legislative solution.

“Who knows, the reality of a Republican FCC may help inspire some of my Democrat colleagues to embrace the idea that a bipartisan, legislative solution is the best possible outcome,” Thune told the State of the Net conference in Washington Monday.

His speech came the same day Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai announced President Donald Trump named him to succeed Chairman Tom Wheeler, former President Obama’s pick to lead the agency. The Democrat passed the agency’s net neutrality rules along partisan lines in 2015.

Pai and Commissioner Michael O’ Rielly, his Republican colleague, said in December they intend to use their new majority to “revisit” the rules “as soon as possible.” President Trump has reportedly already signed onto a plan to move consumer protection and competition authority from the FCC to the Federal Trade Commission.

Extending its authority to regulate internet providers, privacy, and issues like zero rating are symptoms of the FCC finding “its role in the world gradually diminishing,” according to Thune. The chairman suggested net neutrality could be rolled into legislation to reauthorize the FCC’s overarching mission.

“The last time Congress passed meaningful laws affecting the FCC was in the mid-1990s when the internet was just in its infancy,” he said. “It is clearly time for FCC reform.”

Thune was working on legislation to ban internet providers from web traffic throttling, blocking and paid prioritization — the cornerstones of net neutrality — before the FCC passed its rules in 2015. The FCC’s Open Internet Order went a step further by reclassifying internet providers as common carriers, a public utility designation subjecting them to more stringent FCC oversight.

“Complex and ambiguous regulations that shift with the political winds aren’t in anyone’s best interest,” Thune said. “For people to get the maximum benefit possible from the internet, they need certainty about what the rules are, and most importantly, what the rules will be in the coming years. And the only way to achieve this is for Congress to pass bipartisan legislation.”

Thune touted his committee’s record from the last congressional session, which included passing a reauthorization bill and Thune’s MOBILE NOW Act, neither of which made it into law. The committee finished markup on MOBILE NOW Tuesday, paving the way to pass the bill aimed at freeing up federally-held airwaves for crowded wireless carriers and help them deploy infrastructure for 5G.

Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the new chair of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology that oversees the FCC, agrees. Blackburn said in December Thune’s legislation would be a good place to start.

“A legislative fix is going to give you in the industry the certainty that you need so that you know what the rules of the road are for standards for internet conduct,” she said.

Another alternative would be for the Federal Trade Commission to take over regulating internet providers, as it did before the FCC passed the Open Internet Order. While speaking at the same conference Monday, Republican FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen said the FTC could use its antitrust and consumer protection authority to police net neutrality.

But a recent federal court ruling could block the FTC from overseeing internet providers if the FCC moves too fast to repeal, Ohlhausen warned.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision bars the FTC from taking action against any company acting as a common carrier — the new classification for internet providers under net neutrality, and one the FTC is legally prohibited from regulating.

Should the ruling in favor of AT&T withstand an appeal from the FTC, and with an FCC repeal of net neutrality likely, it will be up to Congress whether to pass new rules of its own or repeal the FTC’s common carrier exemption.

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Senate Republicans left town for the last time in 2016 Saturday without renominating Democratic Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel — a move they’ll likely regret if Chairman Tom Wheeler decides to stick around into next year.

Lawmakers barely made a deadline to pass a bill funding the government from Saturday into next spring before recessing until next year, at the same time foregoing their last chance to renominate Rosenworcel and concluding the year-long battle over her reconfirmation. Her term expires before the new Congress is scheduled to begin on Jan. 3.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly circulated a motion for cloture on Rosenworcel’s vote Thursday but didn’t file it on the Senate floor, setting her nomination up for a last-minute Saturday vote. That left a unanimous consent vote as their only option, which many predicted was unlikely given the number of Republicans that have stalled her vote for the last year over Wheeler’s hesitancy to give his own departure date.

Multiple outlets including The Hill reported Thursday Wheeler finally gave that assurance earlier this week to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, saying he would “step down immediately” if Republicans would approve Rosenworcel for another five-year term at the FCC.

The same day Thune told Morning Consult it could be too late for a pledge from Wheeler, who’s waffled on direct questions from Thune and others on whether he’ll follow precedent and step down at the beginning of the new administration.

“My sense is that we’re kind of up against the clock now,” Thune said. “And it’s going to be very hard, even if Wheeler was agreeable to stepping down, to be able to get all this done between now and the time we go out.”

Though Thune’s committee approved Rosenworcel a year ago other Republicans including Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin oppose her renomination altogether, preferring instead to let Trump fill her seat after he takes office in January and give the FCC a 2-1 Republican majority in the meantime.

Republicans may come to regret their chosen course if Wheeler decides to stay on at the FCC, something he could do well into 2018 when his term expires. Rosenworcel, a former Senate staffer with support on both sides of the aisle, has demonstrated a willingness to break from Democrats and work toward the middle, opposing one of Wheeler’s landmark agenda items to shake up the set-top box market. She ultimately forced the chairman to drop the proposal staunchly opposed by Republicans at the last minute.

Wheeler, who’s set a 20-year record for the most party line votes in modern commission history, is unlikely to be so accommodating to Republicans’ agenda — a wish list Trump FCC transition team members and Republican FCC Commissioners have already signaled will start with a rollback of Wheeler’s legacy, including its cornerstone, net neutrality.

“On the day that the Title II Order was adopted, I said that ‘I don’t know whether this plan will be vacated by a court, reversed by Congress, or overturned by a future commission. But I do believe that its days are numbered,'” Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai said Thursday. “Today, I am more confident than ever that this prediction will come true.”

Wheeler, already reticent in committing to leave, has signaled he may not let his legacy be undone without a fight. The chairman blasted Republicans for calling on the agency to halt the passage of major rules until Trump takes office, and last week moved to make what could be a precedent setting enforcement action against AT&T for zero-rating, which the agency is on the verge of deeming a violation of net neutrality.

Either Pai or his Republican colleague Commissioner Michael O’Rielly will take over as chairman next year, but remaining Democrat Mignon Clyburn and Wheeler, should he choose to stay, will have equal voting power until Trump appoints another Republican. Trump and congressional Republicans’ aggressive day one agenda of funding the government and repealing the Affordable Care Act could stall yet another confirmation vote, giving the two Democrats the potential opportunity to block Republicans into 2017.

As Thune himself noted Thursday, it appears Wheeler thus far “wasn’t in any hurry to get out of there.”

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Republicans are blasting Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler for refusing to seek public comment on the latest version of his plan to unlock the set-top box, despite going through several major revisions, a vote delay and a continuing lack of support among even fellow Democratic commissioners.

Conservatives at the commission and on Capitol Hill are criticizing Wheeler following his decision Thursday to indefinitely delay a vote on the FCC’s plan to compel cable and satellite providers to offer their content on apps instead of set-top boxes — a plan that’s gone through so many revisions since its initial public comment period, the commission should hold another one, they argue.

“Your new proposal is intended to benefit consumers, yet those same consumers are not currently able to read this far-reaching new plan,” South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune wrote in the letter to Wheeler Friday. Thune chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that oversees the FCC.

“For a rulemaking that is expected to take years before it is fully implemented, there is no need or urgency for the commission to rush behind closed doors to adopt a final order,” he continued. “Sunlight in government proceedings is critical for ensuring outcomes that provide the most benefit possible for the American people.”

The delay, announced 30 minutes before the agency’s September open meeting, comes two weeks after Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told Thune and other lawmakers she didn’t think the FCC had the legal authority to enact a part of her boss’s plan. The portion in question would give the agency oversight of licensing deals between pay-TV providers and the third-party devices that would download their apps.

Wheeler attributed the delay to “a matter of running out of time” in comments after Thursday’s meeting, but neither Wheeler nor Rosenworcel — who’s waiting on a stalled renomination vote in the Senate — would confirm her dissent from the latest version of the plan, which reportedly has the FCC acting as a “backstop” on copyright licensing deals the agency could deem harmful to consumer choice.

“The last version I saw, it still had a role for the commission,” Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly said after the meeting. “Some would say it’s a backstop, but I would say it’s still got its tentacles involved.”

O’Rielly and fellow Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai said they’ve submitted changes to the plan they would support, but weren’t being included in conversations Wheeler said commissioners were engaged in Wednesday night.

“I had zero,” O’Rielly said.

Wheeler’s decision to keep the item on circulation will give him the freedom to bring it back for a vote anytime, presumably after convincing Rosenworcel.

“The notice deleting the proposal from yesterday’s agenda says — in arcane legalese — that ‘the sunshine period prohibition in 47 C.F.R. § 1.1203 will remain in effect until further notice,'” conservative tech blogger and former head of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau Fred Campbell wrote in Forbes Friday. “In plain English, this means the ordinary back-and-forth between the public and the FCC on Wheeler’s set-top box proposal is prohibited indefinitely.”

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon, who oversee the FCC on the House side, agreed Wheeler should issue a further notice of proposed rulemaking on the plan, presumably now on its fourth iteration since the FCC heard public comment.

“It’s clear that the many questions about the scope and authority of the commission in this set-top box proceeding have taken their toll on its consideration,” Upton and Walden said following Thursday’s delay. “It’s time for the commission to engage in the transparent process that the public deserves. It’s time for Chairman Wheeler to release the text and seek public comment.”

Republicans aren’t alone. Last week 63 House Democrats led by California Rep. Tony Cárdenas sent a letter to the commission urging Wheeler to hold another round of comments on the plan before moving forward.

On Thursday Wheeler said he disagreed “that this is an issue where the public has not had an opportunity to express themselves or has not been heard.”

The delay is a setback to Wheeler’s fall agenda, the last of his chairmanship, during which he plans to issue high-profile rules on privacy for internet service providers and competition in the high-capacity business broadband market.

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Republican Sen. John Thune blasted Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler Thursday for presiding over a more politically partisan regime at the regulatory agency than the last five chairman combined.

During an FCC oversight hearing in the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee — chaired by Thune — the South Dakota senator gave a self-described “hard hitting” opening statement, complete with a chart, counting off more partisan 3-2 votes at the five-commissioner agency during Wheeler’s tenure than the sum total of the last two decades.

“Chairman Wheeler has forced 3-2 votes on party-line items a total of 25 times,” Thune said. “To put that in perspective, in three years under Chairman Wheeler the FCC has seen nearly twice as many partisan votes than in the previous 20 years combined.”

While acknowledging bipartisan consensus isn’t always achievable, Thune accused Wheeler of using “the distribution of information about commission proceedings as a political weapon,” withholding information from the FCC’s two-Republican minority while timing leaks and disclosures to the media and advocates of the chairman’s position “to benefit the partisan agenda.”

“By relying on unnecessarily partisan tactics, Chairman Wheeler has, I believe, missed opportunities for bipartisan accomplishments,” Thune said. “Treating all commissioners fairly and not using the disclosure of nonpublic information as a sword would lead to a better process at the agency, which in turn could only improve the commission’s work product.”

Partisan votes advanced some of the biggest items the commission has seen, both under Wheeler and in the last decade as a whole, with varying degrees of success. While net neutrality — undoubtedly Wheeler’s landmark accomplishment and the agency’s biggest regulatory expansion since the internet age — survived a court challenge, other moves Republicans have decried as overreaches haven’t fared as well.

Earlier this year, federal courts struck down the FCC’s attempt to let municipal-run broadband networks expand outside of their territories to compete with private providers and lower inmate calling rates in prisons. Both outcomes were predicted by Republicans, who Thune warned could follow Wheeler’s example under a Republican administration and undo his legacy, setting the stage for a partisan regulatory back-and-forth that could stall the agency over the next several administrations.

“I haven’t done a box score — I presume that you did — but about 90 percent of the decisions that we make are unanimous,” Wheeler responded. “Some of those 3-2 votes were me voting against one or both of my Democratic colleagues.”

The chairman said 3-2 votes on issues like effective competition for cable and a plan to subsidize carriers to expand in rural Alaska were a mix of Republicans and Democrats voting with his position.

“This is a collegial body, this is a body where the deliberative process is important, and I too hope that we can find ways to resolve issues in a concomitant manner,” Wheeler said, adding there’s still time for Republicans and Democrats to work together on major proceedings the FCC will tackle before the end of the year, including privacy rules for internet providers and rewriting rules to lower the cost of high-capacity broadband for mobile carriers, ATMs, small businesses and other services.

Wheeler said commissioners still have two weeks left to compromise on a provision granting the agency power over copyright license sharing agreements in it’s proposal to make cable and satellite providers use apps instead of set-top boxes. During Thursday’s meeting both Republican commissioners and Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel said work still needs to be done on the licensing part of plan, scheduled for a vote during the commission’s Sept. 29 open meeting.

“The door isn’t closed, lets get at it,” the chairman said.

Thune pointed out Wheeler’s examples of compromise weren’t open meeting votes, where the commission votes on high-profile issues, and clarified he was referring strictly to open meeting votes — almost a third of which were 3-2 decisions during Wheeler’s tenure.

“[That’s] unheard of, at least relative to modern history,” Thune remarked.

Republican Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly have repeatedly expressed their dismay with being “shut out” of the deliberative process under Wheeler virtually since the chairman took the reigns of the agency in 2013. During Thursday’s hearing O’Rielly recalled how Democrat Mignon Clyburn was pressured at the last minute to back out of a compromise with Republicans to expand the Lifeline program earlier this year, delaying the commission’s open meeting until Clyburn eventually got back in line with Wheeler’s bloc of Democrats.

Pai recounted how in a strange rule reversal, Wheeler required all of the commissioners to unanimously agree to change decades-old rules barring broadcasters from owning newspapers in the same market, despite a majority of commissioners supporting a change.

“It was a rather odd situation, since we seemed to have an overwhelming bipartisan majority…that the rule in question…had long since outlived its usefulness,” Pai said. “The process is very strange to require unanimity on an issue when, as you pointed out in your chart, there are a number of high-profile issues where Commissioner O’Rielly and I in particular have suggested changes or made objections, and those are either ignored or dismissed out of hand.”

Republican lawmakers got at least one concession out of Wheeler without even having to ask, as they had during numerous hearings before, whether Wheeler intended to follow precedent and leave office in January with the exit of the Obama administration.

“As a certain November event approaches and a new administration is on the horizon, this may be my last appearance before this committee,” Wheeler said. “I will cooperate fully with the new administration to assure a smooth transition at the FCC.”

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The Federal Communications Commission’s Thursday plan to let cable customers watch TV over free apps instead of set-top boxes “exist[s] within a fantasy world” according to one FCC commissioner, who said a provision to grant the FCC copyright oversight exceeds its authority.

“I will review this proposal carefully over the coming days and weeks, but at the outset it appears to exist within a fantasy world of
unlimited commission authority,” FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, one of the commission’s two Republicans, said after the plan dropped. “The commission is and must remain in the business of licensing spectrum and infrastructure, not content.”

The plan detailed to reporters by senior FCC officials Thursday abandons Chairman Tom Wheeler’s initial pitch to make pay-TV providers like Comcast open up their video streams to third-party devices, and orders providers instead to build free apps subscribers can download on devices like a Roku, Apple TV, smartphone or tablet.

Wheeler’s concession came after cable providers, content programmers, lawmakers, fellow commissioners and the U.S. Copyright Office expressed concern the original plan would make content vulnerable to piracy with DVR functions and manipulation by potential third-party device makers like Google, who could alter channel placement and advertising by building their search functions.

The apps outlined by the FCC will let pay-TV providers control the flow of content from end-to-end and leave channel placement, advertising and licensing deals with programmers intact.

While the app-based approach was the solution offered by the industry in response to Wheeler’s original plan, the FCC tacked on a provision to establish a body within the FCC to review licensing deals between pay-TV providers and third party devices to “serve as a backstop to ensure that nothing in the standard license will harm the marketplace for competitive devices,” according to agency documents published Thursday.

Though FCC officials said the licensing authority the plan seeks to establish is very limited in scope, industry and policy groups opposed to the provision aren’t convinced.

“According to several public sources, the commission will play a much more significant role in the licensing process than simply the ‘backstop’ as it was described today,” the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), which counts Comcast among its members, said in a statement. “The work of this licensing body would be subject to intrusive FCC oversight, creating a bureaucratic morass and improperly involving the FCC in private licensing arrangements in a way that will slow the deployment of video apps, ignore copyright protections and infringe on consumer privacy.”

NCTA drafted the app proposal the FCC drew from for its final plan. The trade group threatened to sue the FCC earlier this year if the agency made the technical aspects of Wheeler’s initial proposal law.

“It’s sad, but not surprising, that even Wheeler’s idea of compromise involves declaring himself ‘King of Copyright,’” said Evan Swarztrauber, communications director at the center-right D.C.-based think tank TechFreedom.

South Dakota Republican and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, who chairs the committee that oversees the FCC, said the agency legally cannot “police copyright as Chairman Wheeler has proposed.” The plan was praised by Democrats including Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who together conducted the survey cited by the FCC that found the average U.S. household pays $231 annually in set-top box rental fees, bringing in almost $20 billion for the industry every year.

John Bergmayer, senior counsel at digital consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, said in a statement the updated plan “addresses the legitimate concerns raised by these parties while preserving the benefits to the public, and fulfilling the congressional directive that requires the FCC to ensure that viewers do not need to rent set-top boxes from their providers.”

Public Knowledge, which previously criticized the Copyright Office’s critique of the rules, published a study the same day alleging the office’s objectivity has been compromised by “regulatory capture,” a result of hiring former entertainment industry employees who champion policies that benefit copyright holders over consumers.

“The report, however, doesn’t necessarily offer a full profile of these employees,” Politico noted in a Friday newsletter, “highlighting examples of their connections to particular industries, but making little mention of their work in other fields like finance or public service.”

Swarztrauber pointed out on Twitter Friday that Public Knowledge has gone through its share of revolving doors at the FCC, where Gigi Sohn — the organization’s former president and CEO of more than a decade — joined Wheeler’s staff as a counselor in 2013 ahead of its landmark net neutrality rulemaking two years later..

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Congress came one step closer to exempting small broadband providers from the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules Wednesday, one day after a federal appeals court struck down providers’ attempt to declare them illegal.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved the Small Business Broadband Deployment Act during markup Wednesday. The legislation exempts small and rural broadband providers with 250,000 or fewer subscribers from the burden of proving they’re complying with the FCC’s net neutrality regulations passed last year.

Providers meeting the bill’s definition won’t have to disclose information including monthly data charges, promotional rates, data caps and network performance.

During markup, Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune said the bill “takes one component of the difficult and sometimes toxic debate over internet regulations, and tries to strike an honest and reasonable compromise that both protects Internet end users and relieves regulatory burdens that disproportionately affect small Internet providers.”

The House of Representatives passed similar legislation by a unanimous 411 to zero vote in March, sending a strong bipartisan mandate to pass the exemption in the Senate.

FCC commissioners exempted small providers from the requirements for one year after passing the Open Internet Order in 2015, and voted in December to extend the exemption for another year for providers with 100,000 or fewer subscribers.

The House bill, authored by Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, extends the exemption for five years. The Senate version advanced Wednesday included an amendment by Democrats limiting the exemption to three years.

“While I respect the goals of this legislation, the bill, if passed, would mean that approximately three million more consumers – for a total of nine million consumers – will lose access to important information about how their broadband provider operates its network,” Ranking Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson said. “All consumers, irrespective of the size of their broadband providers, deserve information about the fees associated with their service, along with how their monthly broadband usage can affect their rates.”

Nelson added the ruling Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which struck down the broadband industry’s challenge to the rules’ legality, affirms their need.

“I am pleased that the court upheld these important open internet protections,” Nelson said. “It is a significant milestone for consumer protections on the internet and a strong affirmation by the court of the FCC’s authority under the Communications Act.”

Republican Sens. Steve Daines of Montana, Jim Risch of Idaho and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia authored the Senate bill.

“The administration does not oppose this exemption, the Small Business Administration supports this exemption, and most importantly, the small businesses that we represent support this exemption,” Daines continued, “so they can focus on their businesses and their customers rather than burdensome regulatory requirements.”

Before passage of the House bill, the White House indicated President Obama would sign the exemption.

Democrat Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — the two lawmakers behind research that led to the divisive set-top box proposal pending at the FCC — opposed advancing the bill.

Several small and rural providers testified to the FCC and Congress last year they would be forced to forego plans to expand their networks if forced to comply with the transparency requirements, which they said would mandate they funnel resources away from innovation and deployment toward legal expenses.

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A Senate committee moved to advance a bill Thursday designed to free up more spectrum to feed wireless providers’ growing need for airwaves and power high-bandwidth services including video streaming and new technology like 5G.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee finished markup Thursday of the Making Opportunities for Broadband Investment and Limiting Excessive and Needless Obstacles to Wireless (MOBILE NOW) Act, written by Chairman John Thune and ranking Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson with the goal of freeing up 255 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum for wireless providers and unlicensed innovators in the 3.1 gigahertz (GHz) to 3.5 GHz band and the 3.7 GHz to 4.2 GHz band.

“The committee’s advancement of the Mobile Now Act was truly a bipartisan effort,” Thune said after the markup. “Enactment of this legislation will pave the way to a 5G future where Americans have access to ultra-fast, next generation wireless technology.”

MOBILE NOW, originally scheduled for markup last fall, gives the National Telecommunications and Information Administration inside the Commerce Department 18 months to come up with ways to incentivize federal agencies to consolidate, share and surrender spectrum, 60 percent of which is held by the government.

The bill will also make it easier to build wireless towers on federal land — a designation that covers 1/3 of all national real estate — speed up the approval process of building new facilities and combine laying new wireline with federal highway construction projects.

Senators further tacked on a manager’s amendment with 12 additional bi-partisan amendments.

One supported by Sens. Brian Schatz, Jerry Moran, Cory Booker, Cory Gardner and gig-economy advocate and 2016 GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio sets aside at least 100 MHz of spectrum for unlicensed use — a designation Thune and Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel recently agreed is crucial to future tech advances in WiFi, the Internet of Things and 5G.

Another 100 MHz would go to commercial mobile providers, some of whom are in danger of running out of airwaves in the next five years, according to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Additional amendments would commission a report on the availability of public WiFi hotspots in low-income neighborhoods, a plan from the FCC and NTIA to ensure adequate spectrum for unlicensed use and a contest with a $5 million reward for the first new method of increasing spectrum efficiency.

“Americans depend on spectrum to power so many of the devices — including smartphones, tablets and even drones — they use every day,” CEO of the Consumer Technology Association Gary Shapiro said following Thursday’s markup. “With demand for connected devices continuing to skyrocket, we need more spectrum to keep Americans from literally losing signal.”

“The MOBILE NOW Act will help ensure the future of wireless connectivity by securing large swaths of additional spectrum for commercial use by 2020,” said Shaprio, whose group includes AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. “This will be critical to the success of future innovations including the rollout of 5G technology.”

Tech, wireless and digital rights groups including Public Knowledge, New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute and CTIA all applauded the bill’s advancement.

“Today’s vote is a key moment illustrating the overwhelming consensus that unlicensed spectrum has become a critical driver of innovation and economic growth in the United States, and democratizes access to the public airwaves,” government affairs counsel for Public Knowledge Phillip Berenbroick said in a statement.

Though an important step forward, the government still has more to do in incentivizing the deployment of future technologies like 5G, according to former Clinton administration Under Secretary of Commerce Ev Ehrlich.

“[D]espite this positive step forward, there is still much to be done to propel us into our 5G-future,” Ehrlich said Thursday.

The former Commerce Department official said increasing airwaves availability and the subsequent expansion of broadband is key to increasing healthcare and education access and keeping up with consumer demand.

“With consumer demand for wireless resources on the rise, there is an unquestionable need to further refine our spectrum policy in order to accommodate fifth-generation networks,” Ehrlich continued. “Under 5G, we will undoubtedly see a flurry of new Internet-enabled technologies and devices that will require a faster, stronger and denser wireless network, and a sounder infrastructure policy to enable that network.”

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