How app stores have become the latest age verification battleground

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In the offline world, age verification is often as simple as showing your driver’s license to a cashier to buy a can of beer, or an adult magazine (for those who still do that kind of thing). Advocates for stronger barriers preventing children from accessing online pornography have long argued for an online equivalent: online age verification. The idea comes with challenges different from those in the physical world, such as the possibility of that information being hacked, which could be enough to deter consumers from trying to access legal discourse. In a 2004 Supreme Court ruling, Ashcroft v. ACLUthe justices found that age verification could not be imposed on pornographic sites because policymakers had not yet shown that less burdensome alternatives, such as enabling parents to turn on content filters on their computers to prevent children from accessing inappropriate sites, were less effective.

However, activists and many lawmakers have continued to focus efforts on porn sites and other platforms that they believe will do the most harm to children and teens, or expose them to the same things that their local store would deny them access to. Last year, the Supreme Court The door cracked open For some versions of this age verification is online. The court effectively decided that the now vast, open, and easily accessible Internet required the court to reconsider its earlier ruling and that “adults do not have a First Amendment right to avoid age verification.”

Meanwhile, efforts across a lot Countries Requiring age verification to access social media platforms has been quite common Forbidden In the courts. Preventing children from accessing pornography is one thing, but creating obstacles for teens and adults trying to access a wide range of speech is another. While courts generally recognize that minors do not have a right to access pornography, creating obstacles for both children and adults to access otherwise lawful speech creates serious constitutional challenges. While teens may encounter some content on social media sites that the state may have a compelling interest in protecting them from, they are also likely to encounter a lot of fully protected speech, making it more difficult to enforce age verification for access to these content platforms. This has led some advocates and policymakers to focus on a different type of platform — one that is arguably closer to the local store.

App stores are the gateway to many platforms that users enjoy on a daily basis. Although it is possible to navigate to different websites from a mobile or desktop browser, most users choose to use apps for a richer, more streamlined experience on their favorite social media services and games.

This makes the centralized nature of mobile app stores like Apple and Google attractive targets for age profiling. Instead of playing with millions of apps, supporters of App Store age verification laws see marketplaces as ideal checkpoints. Additionally, this means that users will only have to send relevant age information to one or two companies at once, rather than multiple companies with less tested security protocols any time they want to download an app.

Parent advocates pushed for The first version of the law passed in Utahwith similar versions later passed in Texas and Louisiana. But the method has gotten support from Meta, Snap, and This could put more pressure on app stores when younger users come along Harmful content or the people On their social media platforms. While Apple has been critical of this approach and has fought the laws, Google has taken a slightly different tactic, recently supporting a separate method passed in California. Google said the law, which Meta also supports, protects consumer privacy and recognizes that keeping children safe online is a “shared responsibility across the ecosystem.” The California model requires that desktop or mobile operating systems collect the account holder’s age or date of birth when they sign up to share it with the App Store and related apps when they are downloaded. But under other versions of the law, those with real motives could try to access some of the same sites through a browser, rather than a mobile app.

There are App Store age verification bills It reached the federal levelwith two somewhat competing proposals introduced in the recent House package of child online safety bills. The first, the App Store Accountability Act, is very similar to similarly named laws in Utah, Texas and Louisiana, which require strict age verification. The other, the Cross-Platform Parents Code, is Support it The Chamber of Progress group, backed by Google and Apple, will not require age verification, but rather ask app stores to collect users’ ages when they create an account and send a signal about their age to developers.

House sponsors of both bills have indicated they are open to working on the strategy together, but it remains unclear how that would work when each takes a very different approach to things like whether companies should be tasked with verifying users’ reported ages. While child online safety legislation in the House of Representatives moved faster than expected Once it’s finally served Late last year, Congress did Mostly shows inability To get these proposals across the finish line yet. In addition, the first legal test of this approach has hit a stumbling block, with a federal judge in Texas Block the state version of the law Which was scheduled to take effect this month. It’s a fight that could eventually reach the Supreme Court.

But this does not mean that there will not be any changes in the meantime. Apple, for example, already seems to see the writing on the wall with the massive wave of support for App Store-based age verification methods. while The CEO lobbied directly Against proposals in the halls of Congress and even the governor of Texas, Apple has He also presented a method Parents can set up children’s accounts that allow them to share their children’s age groups with app developers.

While all of these laws are intended to prevent children from accessing sites containing potentially harmful content, they will all affect the ways adults interact with the Internet as well. In the next few years, we’ll find out whether US Internet users will still be able to navigate the web with relatively few obstructions, or whether verifying your age to download apps becomes as routine as showing your ID to buy a beer.