The Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee recently advanced legislation enforcing new age verification requirements that would impact app store users of all ages. In a strange twist on what one might expect, it was the House Democrats who were unanimously opposed to more federal regulation—and rightly so.
This Committee vote is unfortunately the latest in a discernible trend among conservatives to move away from their free market roots when it comes to Big Tech. In states around the country, it is quite frequently Republican lawmakers who are putting forth bills calling for verifying the age of every app store user for any app—regardless of age appropriateness. Their legislation would force App Store owners like Google and Apple to transfer user data over to individual apps as a matter of vetting.
This, of course, raises privacy concerns as it effectively forces App stores—as well as individual apps—to collect more user data on everybody, while simultaneously broadening the attack surface for hackers. A bad actor would only need an app, or the ability to hack one, to access potential information including facial recognition scans (biometric data) or government IDs.
But perhaps more pertinent than the privacy concerns is the fact that this policy idea simply isn’t good governance. To use an analogy, think of a shopping mall, or even a local strip mall. In that center, you might have a pizza parlor, a dry cleaner, and a liquor store. If the liquor store sells alcohol to minors, the store is the one held accountable—not the owner of the shopping mall. In the digital world, Google and Apple own the mall. When age verification is required for a purchase, the responsibility for compliance belongs on the individual apps themselves.
This should be common sense, and perhaps it is, based on the countless state bills that have failed to pass. And in the exceedingly rare cases where they have passed, serious legal challenges remain. The most notable state effort came from Texas, where its App Store age verification law was recently enjoined in court by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman, who stated it was "akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door."
This brings us to the conclusion that App Store age verification laws are clear-cut political losers. They simply add more federal red tape—including more intrusive data collection and distribution—while applying said red tape to the wrong party to begin with. It’s the perfect example of the sort of shortsighted, government regulations one would expect conservatives to openly mock—why have so many come to embrace this effort?
One should ask them. But don’t let them tell you it’s “for the kids.” If anything, these mandates undermine child safety by letting those responsible for “checking IDs” to shift the blame onto someone else.
