A nationwide internet age verification plan is sweeping Congress

For years, lawmakers at the state and federal levels have tried a variety of measures aimed at making kids safer online, starting with Design standards intended for children to Age verification for individual sites. Recently, a new model has caught on in the US, and is now gaining traction in Congress: putting the burden on app stores across the country.

The new approach to age verification asks mobile app stores to verify users’ ages, then send that information to apps when users download them. The idea has been around for a while, but only this year The first of these laws was passed in UtahVersions in several other states quickly followed. On Tuesday, it appeared in Congress as part of a package of child safety legislation such as the App Store Accountability Act (ASA), earlier foot Written by Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Representative John James (R-Mich.).

The bill is scheduled to be discussed in a hearing before a powerful House committee Taking into account the large package of children’s online safety bills. It comes as the bill gains a new industry supporter: Pinterest. Companies like Meta, Snap, and X also expressed broad support for the App Store’s approach and praised the federal bill when it was introduced.

The Financial Services Act (ASA) may not be the most prominent bill in the House package Under the renewed Children’s Internet Safety Act (KOSA).But it represents an approach that has so far resonated in both red and blue states. Supporters will soon find out how well it works in court, too, a version of the law in Texas She is currently facing a legal challenge. As with other age verification bills, opponents such as Technology Industry Association CCIA They are suing to block the Texas law, saying such a measure would violate the First Amendment by alienating large swaths of legal speech. The Supreme Court has Upheld age verification laws for porn sitesbut age all The application is a separate legal matter that has not yet been considered.

Universal age verification has also proven controversial outside the United States. The UK’s Internet Safety Act began enforcing this in July, Create a set of issues Users found workarounds and expressed security concerns about handing out government-issued IDs or facial scans. Moving verification to the App Store level may alleviate some concerns, however Some privacy and security experts They concluded that there was no way to completely avoid the risks of disclosing sensitive information.

But the bill’s sponsors position it as a straightforward solution — “a common-sense measure,” says Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), co-sponsor of the House version. Edge In a statement. Rep. James says the bill simply “holds big tech companies to the same standards as local stores.” In an interview with edge, Senator Lee expresses confidence in the bill’s ability to overcome First Amendment challenges — a position he has not taken specifically on the Senate version of KOSA, which focuses on The duty of care has been stripped from a new House debate draftwhich would make the platforms responsible for mitigating harm to children.

Lee was one of only three senators to oppose COSA during a vote on the Senate floor last year. This version of KOSA “does not do the job it needs to do to address some of the most significant threats to children online, potentially opening the door to what could turn into political censorship by the federal government,” he said. Edge. He’s worried Pornographic content can still slip through the cracks to reach children – something he hopes to solve A separate bill mandates age verification of pornographic websites The definition of mental health harm in the draft law could be codified by a major medical association that recognizes gender dysphoria as a diagnosis. Lee’s concerns about KOSA are shared by some progressive groups that have opposed it for similar reasons, including fear that it will be used to censor transgender users, though his concerns differ significantly in detail, as his concern about the medical association suggests.

For industry proponents of the App Store approach, placing the burden of age verification on App Store operators could take some of the burden of that responsibility off their own platforms, as well as those of many other app developers. But they also say the policy will be much easier for consumers to navigate, rather than verifying individually across many different apps and having to share more data with each one of them. Support from Pinterest and others “makes a big difference,” Lee says. Even supportive statements from Meta, whose executives often become the target of bipartisan ire when they testify on Capitol Hill, help balance the case. “I’m not aware of anyone who has said, ‘Well, if Meta supports this kind of effort, there’s no way I can do it,’” Lee says. “I think most people in most of these companies probably want to protect children.”

Lee would still welcome support from Apple and Google, the two companies most immediately affected by his legislation. But both companies have Express they With proposals requiring data to be shared with developers beyond what they believe is appropriate. “Anyone who runs an app store is always going to have a lot of influence on this, before or after the bill passes,” says Lee, who was happy to see. Latest updates made by Apple To give parents more control over children’s accounts.

As the App Store age verification model spreads across the US, companies are starting to see a scary patchwork of standards, which could convince more of them to join the version they can live with. With passing California version of age reporting law in the App Storea more diverse state billing landscape is already beginning to emerge.

California law has some distinctive features, such as limiting enforcement to the prosecutor. It also does not require app stores to independently verify users’ reported ages. Instead, they should require users to indicate their date of birth on the device and send those age range signals to app developers when they download the app. Developers who learn that a user’s age is different from the age provided by the App Store are not protected from ignoring that information simply by relying on App Store signals. These differences helped her Choose Google as your supporterAlthough Apple has not taken a similar step yet.

“The need for a federal standard is urgent,” Pinterest CEO Bill Reedy wrote in a letter to James, the House sponsor of the federal bill, announcing the company’s endorsement. “A single national approach would reduce fragmentation while giving families one simple place to approve apps that teens download.”

The direction of the legal challenge over the Texas law, which was scheduled to take effect in January, could have important lessons for a similar federal law. But Lee doesn’t see the need to wait to see how things turn out. “I’m quite confident in moving forward with this legislation as it is,” he says. “I don’t think there’s anything illegal, unconstitutional or problematic about this legislation.” “There is certainly no reason to delay.”