On Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill into law mandating that Apple and Alphabet’s Google verify the age of users on their app stores. This positions Texas, the second-most-populous U.S. state, as a key player in the ongoing debate over regulating smartphone use among children and teenagers.
Reuters:
The law, effective on January 1, requires parental consent to download apps or make in-app purchases for users aged below 18. Utah was the first U.S. state to pass a similar law earlier this year, and U.S. lawmakers have also introduced a federal bill.
Another Texas bill, passed in the state’s House of Representatives and awaiting a Senate vote, would restrict social media apps to users over 18.
How to implement age restrictions has caused a conflict between Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, and Apple and Google, which own the two dominant U.S. app stores.
Meta, along with social media companies Snap, and X, applauded the passage of the bill.
Kathleen Farley, vice president of litigation for the Chamber of Progress, a group backed by Apple and Alphabet, said the Texas law is likely to face legal challenges on First Amendment grounds.
“A big path for challenge is that it burdens adult speech in attempting to regulate children’s speech,” Farley told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. “I would say there are arguments that this is a content-based regulation singling out digital communication.”
“If enacted, app marketplaces will be required to collect and keep sensitive personal identifying information for every Texan who wants to download an app, even if it’s an app that simply provides weather updates or sports scores,” Apple said in a statement.
Google and Apple each has its own proposal that involves sharing age range data only with apps that require it, rather than all apps.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote yesterday, “Apple’s fighting against the tide here. Hopefully, [via the courts] they can swim parallel to shore for a bit and find an easier way to the beach that works for everyone.”
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Does this apply to X-box, Playstation, Switch, etc.?
Appreciate the intent of the law, but yeah, unintended consequences and all that.
If Texas no longer wishes for internet users to have privacy, why hold us in suspense? Might as well just go to the ultimate step. To keep everyone safe, Texas should implant digital trackers and keep a database of biometrics on every resident. That way the authorities will be able to ensure your safety at all times, and proactively censor anything that the Texas administration doesn’t like.
I can’t believe this wasn’t promised on “Day One”.
Now for Day 2, location tracking can be further enhanced by installing remote control devices on all vehicles registered in Texas, so all traffic accidents can be eliminated. The government will ban all non-Tesla sales going forward because obviously only the company that scraped all US taxpayers private data could possibly be effective in future enhanced transportation control.
On day 3, …. the GOP will re-legalize slavery so low level menial work will again be cost effective in Texas. Musk will get tax incentives to build a Megafarm to house them all, and Apple will be ordered to build a plant or suffer new taxes.
Aint this great?
The madness of the far right knows no bounds.
there’ve been no arrests of communist traitors, “far right” my foot
Are you saying your orange idiot idol is incompetent? Or is he really just a puppet fir the oligarchs who actually prefer communism?
There was a time when both parties in the USA actively worked to stamp out communism. Now golfing is much more important.