Age verification arrives for application stores.
The laws obliging Google and Apple to verify people’s age before you can download applications are gaining momentum in the United States and around the world in what could be a radical change for the way people access content on their phones.
Although age checks are increasingly common on the Internet, attention has generally been focused on individual websites and application manufacturers, not application stores. This changes because some politicians and technological companies argue that it would be more efficient and uniform for application stores to verify people’s age in the name of children’s safety.
Eric Goldman, professor of law at the University of Santa Clara, said that there was a battle that rages in the technology industry to find out who will be responsible for the lives of children during the hours they spend on phones and tablets.
“We have this food fight,” he said. “Everyone stands out.”
Three states – Texas, Louisiana and Utah – have adopted laws this year, convincing application markets to check the age of all when they create accounts. They were joined by Singapore, an Asian technological center which adopted a similar law. The four laws should take effect next year, and similar proposals are being studied in other states and in the congress.
But some argue that laws have potential costs in reducing privacy and freedom of expression. Some people in the United Kingdom, who have a new mandate for age controls, check their age through selfies that are managed by the facial age verification software.
And it is not clear to what extent the new laws would limit access to the content of adults, especially if they do not affect web browsers. Online age checks are often followed by overvoltage of bypass solutions, such as virtual private networks, or VPNs, which mask user locations to bypass local regulations.
Lobbying for new laws comes in part from the technology industry. The Mark Zuckerberg meta and some other applicants for applications are impatient to move the burden of online children in application stores rather than taking more responsibilities themselves.
But the trend is to obtain a decline in Apple and Google, which manage the largest application markets, as well as defenders of civil freedoms who see age verification mandates as a death knell for confidentiality and anonymity of the Internet.
Goldman, who opposes age verification mandates for reasons of confidentiality and freedom of expression, said that laws are now popular for several reasons: the broader reaction against technological societies; The number of hours that children spend online, especially since COVID-19; and lack of unit in the technology industry.
“Censorship is style today,” he said. “The regulators are full in the adoption of censorship as a good thing, and they are more than ready to exercise their will on other sources of power in our society.”
State legislators who push the measures say that the status quo does not work.
“Parents are constantly fighting to protect their children, in particular against dangerous content on their phones, tablets and other devices,” Texas State senator said a republican who sponsored the new law. The law indicates that an application shop “will use a commercially reasonable verification method to verify the age of the individual”.
Google and Apple oppose the laws on various reasons, including that they are too swept away and that they require too much data on users.
“This level of data sharing is not necessary – a meteorological application does not need to know if a user is a child,” said Kareem Ghanem, director of public policy at Google, in a blog article on state laws.
He argued that application manufacturers are best placed to think about age. “On the other hand, a social media application must make important decisions concerning the content and features adapted to age,” he said.
More broadly, age verification has accumulated considerable impulse. Twelve states have adopted laws restricting children’s access to social media or demanding parents’ consent, although the courts have blocked three of these laws, according to the Age Verification Providers Association, a commercial group for technological companies that manage age checks. And 24 states have adopted laws requiring age verification to see online pornography, the association indicates.
For some application developers, a state patchwork seems to be a regulatory nightmare to manage. But for application stores, this is proof that there is already a clear standard in the United States for which is responsible for questionable content. Online age checks are already so complicated that the sector has its own commercial group – the age of the association’s verification providers lists more than 30 members on its website. In a blog post in May, when Texas debated its law, the group argued that the age of the App Store was not sufficient in itself. He has cited many reasons, including that application stores have little or no authority with regard to the open web.
Apple and Google say they are ready to assume additional responsibility for children’s safety. They say that they support a framework by which manufacturers of the most risky applications would obtain a standard “age signal” from the application store industry on the general age group of a user, which the user or a parent would provide. Apple says that it plans to deploy a version of the system, known as “age insurance”, on its operating systems soon.
Apple said in a press release that he wanted to “allow parents to share their child’s age group with applications without disclosing sensitive information”.
“Above all, this solution does not require application markets to collect and maintain sensitive personal identification information for each person who wants to download an application, even if it is an application that simply provides meteorological updates or sports scores,” he said. Apple has had “children’s accounts” for years and has recently updated how parents can manage them.
In a policy document this year, Apple compared to an owner of the shopping center and compared the most risky applications to stores or bars.
“We ask merchants who sell alcohol in a shopping center to check the age of a buyer by checking identity documents-we do not ask everyone to put their date of birth to the shopping center if they just want to go to the catering area,” he said.
In May, Apple CEO Tim Cook died in the debate with a telephone call to the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, a republican, asking for changes to the invoice of the App Store or a veto, according to the Wall Street Journal. Abbott, however, signed the bill.
Some legal experts argue that the laws could violate the first amendment because they grant a burden on adult law to see the protected discourse. But neither Apple, neither Google nor their representatives continued to block the laws. The Supreme Court in 1997 canceled a set of internet rules which included age verification, but this year, the Supreme Court on a 6-3 vote confirmed a narrower age verification law of Texas which was aimed at pornographic content.
Congress has struggled to find national legislation on the theme of online children’s safety. The online security law of the proposed children, which would create a legal “obligation of diligence” for Internet platforms to limit damage to users, adopted the Senate last year but not in the House. Senator Mike Lee’s law, Rutah, and representative John James, R-Mich., Would try to tackle problems such as violent or sexual materials in application stores.
An attraction for the charge of application stores in charge of age verification – if technological companies will do so – is the idea of creating a uniform system of age checks, said Peter Chandler, Executive Director of Internet Works, a Lobbying and Trade group for more than 20 medium -sized technological companies such as Reddit and Roblox.
“Imagine an age check-in diet that required that each platform or website is presented or created its own age check system,” he said.
“What you would find yourself is this very compartmentalized age check system. How can we ask parents to understand and navigate this? ” He said. “Sometimes it’s the simplest.”