Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers in a congressional hearing last January that it didn’t make sense for his platforms to verify how old their users are in order to serve them age-appropriate experiences. Instead, that responsibility should lie with app stores, he said.
Just over a year later, one state has taken his advice.
Utah passed a first-of-its-kind bill last week requiring app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent before minors could download apps to their devices.
The bill, which is awaiting Utah Governor Spencer Cox’s signature, marks a win for Zuckerberg and other platform operators, who have faced mounting pressure to make a bigger effort to protect children and teens online. And it could lead to a major shift in how all users – not just young people – interact with app stores. At least eight other states have introduced similar bills.
But the bill is already facing pushback from Apple and Google, as well as other critics who say it raises privacy and First Amendment concerns.
Apple, which has long made privacy central to its brand, said in a report published last week, “While only a fraction of apps on the App Store may require age verification, all users would have to hand over their sensitive personally identifying information to us — regardless of whether they actually want to use one of these limited set of apps. That’s not in the interest of user safety or privacy.”
In a blog post published Wednesday, Google’s director of government affairs and public policy, Kareem Ghanem, criticized what he called “fast-moving legislative proposals being pushed by Meta and other companies in an effort to offload their own responsibilities to keep kids safe to app stores.”
“These proposals introduce new risks to the privacy of minors, without actually addressing the harms that are inspiring lawmakers to act,” Ghanem said.
Both Apple and Google have suggested alternative proposals that would involve a shared responsibility for age verification between app stores and app developers. They’re also pushing for privacy-protected age data to be shared only with the platforms that need it.
Google this week sent a veto request to Utah’s governor over the bill, and has also shared bill text of its proposal with Utah legislators, Google spokesperson Danielle Cohen told CNN.
