Mike Lee’s App Store Accountability Act Would Make Google and Apple Check IDs
Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee has introduced a bill to keep porn out of app stores. There might just be one tiny problem here: They already do.
So, what’s the point? Dig a little deeper and you’ll see that this bill is about forcing age verification on app stores and mobile devices, with a side goal of chilling sex-related speech.
Porn Is Already Banned From App StoresÂ
Lee is framing his new bill (S. 5364) as a matter of “accountability”—a word found right in the bill’s title—and of preventing “big corporations” from “victimiz[ing] kids” with “sexual and violent content.” We can’t count on tech companies to act “moral” on their own accord, Lee posted to X.
But big corporations like Google and Apple already ban apps featuring sexual content, and these bans extend not just to kids but to everybody.
While apps can be downloaded from a plethora of sources, there are two main centralized app marketplaces: Apple’s App Store, for iPhones, and the Google Play store, for Androids. Play Store guidelines reject all apps “that contain or promote sexual content or profanity, including pornography, or any content or services intended to be sexually gratifying.” The App Store explicitly prohibits apps featuring “overtly sexual or pornographic material,” which it defines broadly to include any “explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.” Apple also bans “hookup” apps and any other “apps that may include pornography or be used to facilitate prostitution.”
Lee’s bill can’t be about simply convincing Apple and Google to adopt his version of morality, since they already have.
No, this legislation is about forcing policies that check IDs before apps can be downloaded, age-gating certain features on social media, and making tech companies even more afraid of allowing anyone to access adult content.
The Threat: Letting Parents Sue Over Sexual Content, Violent Content, & Direct MessagesÂ
First, this bill creates a private right of action for parents and guardians against app stores that expose their children to pornographic content and extreme violence.
That means these companies can be sued.
App stores can protect themselves from liability by enforcing age verification and parental controls.
In short, the bill isn’t just concerned with getting app stores to block apps dedicated to explicit content or apps predominantly concerned with sexual services (things they already do). It’s about letting people sue app stores if any app they carry exposes any minor to explicit content.
If minors download a web browser and visit porn websites, their parents can sue.
If minors download X or Bluesky or Reddit and happen upon some sort of sexualized image, their parents can sue.
If minors download a chat app and peers direct message them GIFs featuring cartoons committing violence, or inappropriate selfies, or any message at all, their parents can sue.
All a parent has to say is that their under-18-year-old child suffered some sort of harm from exposure to visual content that features “real or simulated violence” or that “appeals to a prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion,” depicts or describes sexual contact or “lewd exhibition,” and “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as to minors.”
Parents could also sue if their kid downloads an app where minors were allowed to send or receive direct messages. Among the things Lee’s bill wants off limits are “a social or messaging forum whereby a user may interact directly or indirectly with users that are minors.”
The Remedy: Age Verification
Apple and Google obviously can’t control content across the entirety of the internet, so it’s going to be impossible for them to actually prevent minors using web browsers, social media platforms, and other apps from exposure to anything above a G-rating. So their choices are to face endless lawsuits or to implement the age verification rules that Lee wants to see.
The App Store Accountability Act would create a “safe harbor” for app stores that enact a long list of policies prescribed by the bill, including “determin[ing] the age category for each individual in the United States that uses the app store of such provider and verify[ing] such individual’s age using commercially reasonable methods.”
After age verifying, app stores would have to get parental consent for minors to use
Article from Reason.com
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