Meta Wants Apple and Google to Verify the Age of App Downloaders (msn.com) 51
Meta wants to force Apple and Google to verify the ages of people downloading apps from their app stores, reports the Washington Post — and now Meta's campaign "is picking up momentum" with legislators in the U.S. Congress.
Federal and state lawmakers have recently proposed a raft of measures requiring that platforms such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram block users under a certain age from using their sites. The push has triggered fierce debate over the best way to ascertain how old users are online. Last year Meta threw its support behind legislation that would push those obligations onto app stores rather than individual app providers, like itself, as your regular host and Naomi Nix reported. While some states have considered the plan, it has not gained much traction in Washington.
That could be shifting. Two congressional Republicans are preparing a new age verification bill that places the burden on app stores, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans... The bill would be the first of its kind on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have called for expanding guardrails for children amid concerns about the risks of social media but where political divisions have bogged down talks. The measure would give parents the right to sue an app store if their child was exposed to certain content, such as lewd or sexual material, according to a copy obtained by the Tech Brief. App stores could be protected against legal claims, however, if they took steps to protect children against harms, such as verifying their ages and giving parents the ability to block app downloads.
The article points out that U.S. lawmakers "have the power to set national standards that could override state efforts if they so choose..."
Federal and state lawmakers have recently proposed a raft of measures requiring that platforms such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram block users under a certain age from using their sites. The push has triggered fierce debate over the best way to ascertain how old users are online. Last year Meta threw its support behind legislation that would push those obligations onto app stores rather than individual app providers, like itself, as your regular host and Naomi Nix reported. While some states have considered the plan, it has not gained much traction in Washington.
That could be shifting. Two congressional Republicans are preparing a new age verification bill that places the burden on app stores, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans... The bill would be the first of its kind on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have called for expanding guardrails for children amid concerns about the risks of social media but where political divisions have bogged down talks. The measure would give parents the right to sue an app store if their child was exposed to certain content, such as lewd or sexual material, according to a copy obtained by the Tech Brief. App stores could be protected against legal claims, however, if they took steps to protect children against harms, such as verifying their ages and giving parents the ability to block app downloads.
The article points out that U.S. lawmakers "have the power to set national standards that could override state efforts if they so choose..."
Meta (Score:2)
Can't Meta do this when you are creating an account? Why do Apple or Google need to do this?
Re:Meta (Score:5, Informative)
Because fuckerbook wants to push liability on to app stores so it can spy more freely without having to worry about silly ol' things like lawsuits.
It's really stupid, but think of the children, or some shit.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Nah, just shifting the legal responsibility (Score:3)
Another company shifting legal responsibility onto a different company.
- The measure would give parents the right to sue an app store if their child was exposed to certain content, such as lewd or sexual material
- App stores could be protected against legal claims, however, if they took steps to protect children against harms, such as verifying their ages and giving parents the ability to block app downloads.
Yet again shifting legal responsibility off the app store onto the parents.
Who gets to define "lewd"
Re: Meta (Score:3)
Smokescreen (Score:3)
Your question presupposes that age verification is the actual goal. It isn't. Tracking is the goal.
In order to link your identity across multiple accounts all over, we are seeing a huge increase of 2FA that requires a cell phone. This isn't quite enough, or can't be justified to be mandatory in every scenario, so now age verification is the next excuse. It's absolutely not about age verification and is about enabling further tracking measures to force you to show ID, give a cell phone number, or use a c
The Nanny State (Score:1)
Sounds redundant (Score:4, Insightful)
Meta need to do this when being accessed from a browser.
They require an account to view all but basic information.
Meta has to do this verification anyway.
App stores already have age based content restrictions.
Doubly redundant (Score:2)
When the web was first created, the nerd world was asked how to protect kids from the whole internet .
So we did what TV builders did, and provided parental controls. The app store can ask the parental controls if this is a kid.
If it has to be done with no code changes to the controls, a first app could try to open an age-restricted site, to see if the controls kick in. If so, no age-restricted apps. If not, download the asked-for app.
Ditto for sites with both adult and kid content.
Re: (Score:2)
This is something that needs to be taught. We nearly came damn close to having the entire Internet regulated so tightly that a curse word would be a Federal crime, under the CDA.
Re:Doubly redundant (Score:4, Insightful)
Parental controls should be implemented client-side. But you see, it's never truly bout giving parents the tools to protect their own kids, it's about parents (and busybody/holier-than-thou non-parents) having control over other peoples' kids.
It's the same exact deal as with the LGBTQ+ books in school libraries. The schools could simply move the books to an "only available upon request" location and maintain a list of parents who have requested that their kids not be allowed to check out such material. Everybody should then be happy, right? Well, nope, because again, the people who push for this stuff aren't just trying to restrict their own kids from things they find objectionable, they've got their sights set on controlling an entire generation.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
It's doesn't have to be a flawless, impossible to bypass defence, it just has to be a low effort option that will cost Google and Apple basically nothing to implement. They already have parental controls, they already block access to adult media on their streaming services. In fact I am surprised they don't already have this for apps.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They don't need an excuse.
They don't want to eliminate browser access, that would interfere with the "like" buttons and tracking pixels websites plaster over everything, which is key to their advertising business. They want to know which account is hitting those trackers, so you need to be logged in on your browser.
Slippery slope (Score:4, Informative)
If we push this responsibility for gatekeeping to the app stores, we must consequently restrict the available app stores in order to insure their control of access to the dangerous applications, otherwise children will just install from the alternative app stores.
Re:Slippery slope (Score:4, Informative)
And force all operating systems to restrict software to app stores.
with rules that can work like (Score:2)
And force all operating systems to restrict software to app stores.
with rules that can work like
limited fees
limited % for payment systems
must allow apps to have out side payment systems
No Censorship or VERY limited content Censorship
emulators must be allowed that can load roms / images from files with NO trade mark or IP take down allowed.
No 1st party only APIs allowed
No only one app store you must be allowed to install stuff like steam and gog + they must work in full.
Re: (Score:2)
And given Meta platforms can be accessed without an app, it isn't really helping age limit access to Facebook et al.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh it gets better.
States that have passed think of the children porn laws now have to contend with fairly vanilla porn being paywalled essentially (VPN), but the wild west of the darkweb freely accessible to any child who can manage some mild research. Certainly nipped that in the bud.
Action/Reaction. And yet another database to hack, exposing those parents.
It's dumb piled on dumb.
A problem for small/free app stores (Score:2)
If small app stores that aren't in it for the money are burdened with this, it could put them out of business. F-Driod [f-droid.org], I'm looking at you.
Ditto "workaround" stores like Aurora Store [f-droid.org], which "works around" having to have a Google account to get things from Google's Android app store.
half baked (Score:2)
'The article points out that U.S. lawmakers "have the power to set national standards that could override state efforts if they so choose..."'
What about state's rights!?!
What if services are accessed through a web page? A service like Facebook cannot avoid its obligations by pushing them on Apple and Google. Since they can't, why bother? Would work great for PornHub, right? Publish an app, let age verification work there and nowhere else.
And I thought App stores were evil and we needed to get rid of them
Re: (Score:2)
'The article points out that U.S. lawmakers "have the power to set national standards that could override state efforts if they so choose..."'
What about state's rights!?!
While you misplaced the apostrophe, it depends. I think this easily falls within the commerce clause. When it doesn't, occasionally the federal government holds some kind of tangentially related funding hostage. Like for example, for the government to enforce the national minimum age for legal drinking, they withheld 10% of federal highway funding to any state that didn't comply.
Either way, nobody gives a shit about states' rights unless it favors legislation they support. For example, if you're a democrat
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For example, if you're a democrat then you are for states' rights on this issue, but against states' rights on abortion.
No, actually I'd like Florida to get bent over their belief that they can compel some porn site over in Prague to comply with their stupid age verification laws.
It's about as stupid as California's proposition 65 warning on eBay listings, to which I usually just put "Everything in California causes cancer."
Re: half baked (Score:2)
No, actually I'd like Florida to get bent over their belief that they can compel some porn site over in Prague to comply with their stupid age verification laws.
Wait did they actually try this? Sure, it could work for domestic porn sites, but not foreign ones.
This is one of the things I regularly bash Internet Germans over (that, and they like to blame the United States for "inspiring" Hitler in order to deflect blame from themselves.) Basically they get pissed off at steam for not respecting German laws on age verification, and they pretend it can be done without violating the user's privacy because -- get this -- cigarette vending machines (still a thing there) d
Two congressional Republicans ... (Score:2)
Apart from the fact that Meta et al are web accessible.
So...kill the Apps , or kill the web interface ( on the web you can have ad blocking and tracker blocking).
How would this work in practice? (Score:1)
Re: How would this work in practice? (Score:2)
There are ways, like providing a credit card to be charged a token value, or sending scanned IDs, preferably non-doctored.
PG (Score:1)
Lawsuit Protection (Score:2)
This is portrayed as making the app stores "responsible". But it is really about making the app creator immune to legal responsibility. They create a list of requirements that are acceptable to the companies. If they do those things, no one can sue them. And the states can't add additional regulations.
The app stores may go along, but only if they get a similar list of things that will protect them.
You claim you are protecting the "children" or the "public" but you are really protecting the business. Oppo
KYC overload (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Non-Starter (Score:4, Interesting)
Before Apple and Google will take on the responsibilities of playing the role of age enforcement for
someone else's platform, they'll simply pull the App from their respective app stores and be done with it.
Facebook / Meta has far more to lose here than Apple or Google do. They'll back off of this demand in
a hurry.
GOP abandons principles (Score:2)
It's "personal responsibility" and "state's rights" until a rich person doesn't like it. This is one rich 'person' dumping the problem (of possible legal liability) onto a different rich 'person'. Since governments are demanding Google isn't a monopolistic service, isn't the only answer, demanding Google fix the problem, isn't, well, an answer to the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's the "won't somebody think of the children" version of demanding that ISPs and tech companies be the content police. Republicans want this, where democrats want this:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... [eff.org]
Re: (Score:1)
That's what some Democrats want. Some others want people deplatformed for racism, misgendering, and whatnot.
Re: (Score:2)
Hilariously wrong on so many levels.
Re: (Score:2)
In the case mentioned by the EFF, this goes waaay beyond deplatforming. It's more like they're demanding that certain people shouldn't be allowed to have any sort of presence on the internet, period.
Re: (Score:2)
And some people legitimately shouldn't. Just like some (ok, a lot of) people shouldn't be allowed near any kind of motor vehicle's driver seat.
Re: (Score:3)
Twenty minutes after this appstore age verification becomes law, it is pretty much guaranteed to become mandatory everywhere else -- after all, "the infrastructure is already in place! Only terrorists could possibly object!"
Slippery slope: Pornography, or even searching for information that is deemed "questionable" by the wrong person in the wrong seat could be a mess. Inform
\o/ (Score:1)
Did Meta pre-emptively decide that the best way was: creeping on everyone's bidnizz 24/7 ?
Let the parents manage that (Score:1)
This isn't something the government should be getting into. Let parents decide what is best for their kids. We don't need a nanny state.
It's already bad enough with Meta's Quest where you can't allow your child to play a Teen rated game, and you can't just guvr their profile a fake DOB because Meta can force you to provide your ID [meta.com] to verify age and then ban your account if it does not match your real life info. And if they find out your kid is using your account to play a game, you can get banned too. This
Re: (Score:2)
App? (Score:3)
>"where lawmakers have called for expanding guardrails for children amid concerns about the risks of social media but where political divisions have bogged down talks. The measure would give parents the right to sue an app store if their child was exposed to certain content, such as lewd or sexual material"
Why would a child have access to an unsupervised, unrestricted internet device in the first place? Perhaps the PARENTS should be suing themselves? Also, you know, every phone/tablet/computer has a BROWSER on it. It doesn't need to be "installed" via an app store, and it opens the ENTIRE WORLD to that device. So how is forcing every adult user to provide ID on a stupid app store going to stop that for children?
I love that these same people pushing this silly stuff would be the first to freak out if you propose restricting access to or the devices in the first place, as if that doesn't or can't work. Would you give children unsupervised access to a unlocked gun? To an unlocked liquor cabinet? To any book in a library? To your car?
We need child-friendly devices- ones that can't install/use ANY app without parental approval. And can't communicate (call/text/chat/etc) with ANYONE or go ANYWHERE on the internet except through a parent-controlled whitelist. The restrictions can be gradually relaxed as the child gets older. That should be the norm.
Won't happen (Score:2)
Elon Musk is the head of the Republican Party, so he won't allow it. At least not for downloading the twitter app, on which you can find all kinds of lewd and other content.
Fuck off, Meta (Score:2)