Google Claims Meta Seeks to 'Offload' Kid Safety Duties

Google slammed Meta this week for supporting state bills requiring app stores to verify users’ ages. However, an advocacy group for children online rejected the idea of a single best way to verify ages.

Whereas most kids safety bills put the onus on websites or apps like Facebook to check user age, a recent Utah bill and similar legislation in states like Alabama would shift that burden to companies like Apple and Google that sell apps and games (see 2503050052 and 2502270015).

“There are a variety of fast-moving legislative proposals being pushed by Meta and other companies in an effort to offload their own responsibilities to keep kids safe to app stores,” Google blogged Wednesday. “These proposals introduce new risks to the privacy of minors, without actually addressing the harms that are inspiring lawmakers to act.”

Common Sense doesn't "believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to age verification -- what works best depends on the technology, circumstances, and what families actually want," responded Daniel Weiss, the child safety nonprofit's chief advocacy officer, in a statement Thursday. "We're looking for solutions that protect privacy while being fair and proportionate."

"Tech companies need to put the same energy into protecting kids that they currently devote to figuring out users' ages for marketing purposes," added Weiss. "We've seen varying approaches from different platforms -- and will reserve judgment until we see real implementation ... Bottom line: every company must make kids' safety a much higher priority than they do today."

Google said that requiring app stores to share if a user is a child with millions of app developers “raises real privacy and safety risks, like the potential for bad actors to sell the data or use it for other nefarious purposes. This level of data sharing isn’t necessary -- a weather app doesn’t need to know if a user is a kid. By contrast, a social media app does need to make significant decisions about age-appropriate content and features.”

Instead, Google proposed a model where “only developers who create apps that may be risky for minors would request industry-standard age signals from app stores, and the information is only shared with permission from a user (or their parent).” Meta didn’t comment Thursday.

Last month, Apple announced a way for parents to share information about children’s ages with apps, so developers can provide appropriate content. The new application programming interface (API) is coming later this year, it said.

Like Google, Apple argues that “the right place to address the dangers of age-restricted content online is the limited set of websites and apps that host that kind of content.” On the other hand, requiring “age verification at the app marketplace level is not data minimization,” it said. “By contrast, the Declared Age Range API is a narrowly tailored, data-minimizing, privacy-protecting tool to assist app developers who can benefit from it, allowing everyone to play their appropriate part in this ecosystem.”