The App Store Accountability Act attempts to regulate unproven technology

A growing number of state-level legislative proposals seek to expand parental oversight of children’s online activities. Now, Congress is advancing the App Store Accountability Act, which would require major application platforms, such as Apple’s App Store and Google Play, to verify that underage users have affirmative parental consent for each app download and purchase. However, the bill attempts to legislate technological solutions that do not exist yet. 

Modeled after Utah’s Senate Bill 142, the App Store Accountability Act would require app stores with 5 million or more users to “verify the individual’s age category using a commercially available method or process that is reasonably designed to ensure accuracy.” App stores would also be responsible for providing parents with controls over identified underage user accounts.

The technology industry is divided on the bill, largely along competitive lines. Meta, the parent company of Instagram, supports this approach and has purchased prominent billboard advertising in Washington, DC.  In contrast, Google contends that these proposals largely attempt “to offload their own responsibilities to keep kids safe to app stores,” as promoted by Meta and other firms.

Absent from both perspectives, however, is any evidence of proven, large-scale age verification technology at the app store level.

This gap exists in part because previous attempts at mandatory local age verification have either been abandoned or struck down by the courts. As Reason Foundation has noted, courts generally view forced age data collection as a First Amendment violation. 

In a decision evaluating the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, Circuit Court Judge Milan Smith wrote that “the forced creation and disclosure of highly subjective opinions about content-related harms to children is unnecessary for fostering a proactive environment in which companies, the state, and the general public work to protect children’s safety online.” 

Similarly, last March, a U.S. district court upheld the ongoing injunction against the act on the basis that it was not “narrowly drawn” enough to advance the interest of protecting children without imposing on speech. 

Internationally, where judicial objections have not intervened, technical challenges remain significant. In 2023, Australia’s eSafety Commission noted that “each type of age verification or age assurance technology comes with its own privacy, security, effectiveness or implementation issues. A decision to mandate age assurance is not yet ready to be taken.” Nevertheless, Australia moved forward with a pilot program for age verification, even as the nation recently suffered a major data breach involving identification data collected for club and bar entry.

The App Store Accountability Act attempts to mandate a technology that does not currently exist at the required scale or reliability. Age verification remains a continual technical challenge, especially as artificial intelligence rapidly evolves. No company or technology can currently guarantee total exclusion of underage users.

One significant challenge is that applications can be accessed via web browsers on both computers and smartphones. Underage users frequently create accounts with false names or temporary email addresses. The practice is so common that Merriam-Webster has an entry for “finsta,” slang for “fake Instagram.”

Many social media companies now employ extensive moderation teams to identify and block suspected underage users. For example, if a new account uploads a photo conspicuously similar to one from a previously banned account, it may be flagged as fraudulent. These measures exist because technologically adept teens continually devise new methods to circumvent age-verification systems, resulting in an ongoing cycle of adaptation.

Beyond behavioral analysis, some companies, like Instagram, are using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to estimate age based on biometrics, such as facial features. Yoti, a provider of age verification technology, reports 94% accuracy with face-scanning technology. However, last year Yoti was scrutinized in a UK government investigation after a coding error—potentially not attributable to Yoti—led to inaccurate age estimation for OnlyFans content creators.

Meanwhile, advances in “deepfake” technology have made hyper-realistic synthetic images easily accessible, raising concerns about the reliability of systems tasked with detecting, for instance, falsified driver’s license images shown to a verification camera.

Depending on how a regulatory agency interprets “reasonable” standards, companies may be required to collect increasing amounts of sensitive personal information. For example, app stores could be required to scan a user’s face each time an adult-themed or dating app is downloaded, storing this information in a central database to demonstrate compliance. The stricter the standard, the greater the intrusion into user privacy, and the greater the risk of inadvertently discriminating against those underrepresented skin tones that are not as common in facial recognition training data.

To be sure, some emerging technologies may address private and accurate age verification. For example, in April, Google announced a “zero knowledge” method for transmitting age thresholds without preserving personal data. This technique could mitigate some concerns about privacy and information retention. At present, however, the App Store Accountability Act would rely upon the emergence of verification solutions that are largely unproven, subject to ambiguous standards, and not fully achievable with existing technology. 

Congress would be better off ensuring that parents can use existing tools to make decisions about raising their children as they wish. Emerging parental safety controls, such as Instagram’s teen accounts, offer private solutions to keep children online without extensive, poorly structured regulation.

The post The App Store Accountability Act attempts to regulate unproven technology appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Source: https://reason.org/commentary/the-app-store-accountability-act-attempts-to-regulate-unproven-technology/