Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee has introduced a bill to keep porn out of app stores. There might just be one tiny problem here: They already do.
So, what's the point? Dig a little deeper and you'll see that this bill is about forcing age verification on app stores and mobile devices, with a side goal of chilling sex-related speech.
Lee is framing his new bill (S. 5364) as a matter of "accountability" -- a word found right in the bill's title -- and of preventing "big corporations" from "victimiz[ing] kids" with "sexual and violent content." We can't count on tech companies to act "moral" on their own accord, Lee posted to X.
But big corporations like Google and Apple already ban apps featuring sexual content, and these bans extend not just to kids but to everybody.
While apps can be downloaded from a plethora of sources, there are two main centralized app marketplaces: Apple's App Store, for iPhones, and the Google Play store, for Androids. Play Store guidelines reject all apps "that contain or promote sexual content or profanity, including pornography, or any content or services intended to be sexually gratifying." The App Store explicitly prohibits apps featuring "overtly sexual or pornographic material," which it defines broadly to include any "explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings." Apple also bans "hookup" apps and any other "apps that may include pornography or be used to facilitate prostitution."
Lee's bill can't be about simply convincing Apple and Google to adopt his version of morality, since they already have.
No, this legislation is about forcing policies that check IDs before apps can be downloaded, age-gating certain features on social media, and making tech companies even more afraid of allowing anyone to access adult content.
Lee laid out some of it on X:
First, this bill creates a private right of action for parents and guardians against app stores that expose their children to pornographic content and extreme violence.
That means these companies can be sued.
App stores can protect themselves from liability by enforcing age verification and parental controls.
In short, the bill isn't just concerned with getting app stores to block apps dedicated to explicit content or apps predominantly concerned with sexual services (things they already do). It's about letting people sue app stores if any app they carry exposes any minor to explicit content.
If minors download a web browser and visit porn websites, their parents can sue.
If minors download X or Bluesky or Reddit and happen upon some sort of sexualized image, their parents can sue.
If minors download a chat app and peers direct message them GIFs featuring cartoons committing violence, or inappropriate selfies, or any message at all, their parents can sue.
All a parent has to say is that their under-18-year-old child suffered some sort of harm from exposure to visual content that features "real or simulated violence" or that "appeals to a prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion," depicts or describes sexual contact or "lewd exhibition," and "lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as to minors."
Parents could also sue if their kid downloads an app where minors were allowed to send or receive direct messages. Among the things Lee's bill wants off limits are "a social or messaging forum whereby a user may interact directly or indirectly with users that are minors."
Apple and Google obviously can't control content across the entirety of the internet, so it's going to be impossible for them to actually prevent minors using web browsers, social media platforms, and other apps from exposure to anything above a G-rating. So their choices are to face endless lawsuits or to implement the age verification rules that Lee wants to see.
The App Store Accountability Act would create a "safe harbor" for app stores that enact a long list of policies prescribed by the bill, including "determin[ing] the age category for each individual in the United States that uses the app store of such provider and verify[ing] such individual's age using commercially reasonable methods."
After age verifying, app stores would have to get parental consent for minors to use the app store generally and "on a download-by-download basis." Any time a minor wanted to purchase an app or to make an in-app purchase enabled by the app store, additional parental authorizations would have to be obtained.
And, to the extent possible, Google and Apple would have to provide parents with controls that let them "prevent a minor from accessing any adult website on the web browser of the mobile device" and that let them set "usage limits, including daily limits and limitations during school and evening hours."
App stores would also have to tell every app developer that used their platform the age category of every user who downloaded their app, then require developers to use this information to offer certain features (like parental controls) based on user ages. App stores would have to somehow determine if every app in the store was doing this and ban any that didn't.
If app stores follow all of these policies and some others, they might be shielded from suits by parents angry over kids' exposure to sexuality, violent content, or DMs. That shield could be taken away, however, if the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) determines that an app store isn't providing parents "with effective tools to protect children from [sexual or violent] content on apps, including age verification technology, parental oversight and consent features, and accurate app age ratings."
"We have the technology to ensure age-verification without ending anonymity online or endangering First Amendment rights, and we should use it," Lee posted on X.
His plan -- to require age verification at the point of downloading apps, not creating social media accounts -- may be more protective of privacy and speech than requiring every online platform to individually age-verify users. But there's an even less infringing alternative: letting parents, not the government, be in charge of what their kids can and can't do online.
And device-level or app store-level age verification still come with civil liberties concerns.
"One of the most significant concerns about age-verification mandates is their potential to abet privacy breaches and magnify data-security risks," notes Kristian Stout at Truth on the Market:
To implement effective age verification, platforms and app stores would need to collect and store a trove of users' sensitive personal information. This creates new vectors for data breaches and other potential misuses of that information.
For example, if an app store were required to verify the age of every user, it might need to collect government-issued IDs or other forms of identification. This sensitive data, if compromised, could lead to identity theft or fraud.
Stout also notes that there are constitutional concerns with banning minors from using app stores entirely just because some portion of content therein might be inappropriate.
"This kind of proposal is...rooted in the idea of comparing app providers to bars and taverns, a comparison that courts have explicitly rejected. Just as it would be unconstitutional to ban minors from entering a shopping mall on the grounds that one of the mall's stores sells alcohol, it is similarly problematic to restrict access to entire digital platforms or app stores due to the presence of some potentially inappropriate content."
Rules like the ones Lee wants to implement include a whole lot of headaches for app stores and app developers. These hurdles wouldn't just be inconvenient for Apple and Google; they would cement their dominance at a time when a lot of politicians are clamoring for just the opposite.
People often complain that Apple and Google have a stranglehold on app stores. If a huge array of regulations were imposed, and huge legal liabilities possible for not following them, it would be impossible for any upstart app store to compete. "Age verification mandates would impose costly barriers to entry for start-ups and smaller operators," suggests the New America Foundation. "Such costs could unintentionally bias the market toward larger, more established companies that are better positioned to implement age verification and undertake the associated costs."
Rules like these would also make things that much harder for small app developers.
And how would a law like this handle siblings who share devices? What happens if a minor sometimes uses a parent's phone or tablet to play games?
Lee's bill may actually be a sort of Trojan horse, pretending to be all about app stores when it could coerce all sorts of apps and social platforms to enact age-level restrictions.
Remember, parents could sue over kids' exposure to "a social or messaging forum whereby a user may interact directly or indirectly with users that are minors." Any platform that does this is a liability for app stores.
Theoretically, app stores would be protected by the safe harbor platform. But there are a lot of contingencies there, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for app stores to say they'll reject apps that allow minors to access direct messages.
So, developers that want their apps to remain in app stores would then have to block minors from accessing this feature. And it's not hard to imagine other features being added to that list in future legislation or FTC rule making. (Lee's bill would already require app stores to ban apps that didn't offer parental controls.)
This would also mean that individual apps would need to know all user age categories. Lee's bill would handle this by requiring apps to share this information with apps if feasible. But this, at minimum, could create a lot more headaches. And if the system of app-store-informing-app-developer proves imperfect, it could be used to demand age verification by individual apps.
I think there's also an element of Overton window moving here. Once you're requiring app stores to age check everyone, it becomes a lot more palatable for individual apps to start checking ages too.
There's an even more fatal flaw in Lee's plan than the ones I've mentioned so far: People can download apps to their phones from a variety of sources. The app stores manned by Apple and Google provide convenient, centralized ways of getting apps, but apps can be downloaded from developer websites.
Lee's bill would do nothing to control content or policies on individual websites where content can be accessed and apps can be downloaded.
Teens who want to access apps and content their parents don't want them to -- or families who simply want to skip this whole onerous permissions process -- could fairly easily get around the app store rules. As the New American Foundation notes: "Implementation at the app-store level leaves large gaps in coverage because it would not encompass non-application points of access like websites."
Not everyone will know how to do this, sure. I'm not saying the rules wouldn't deter people.
But this comes with its own concerns. Because rules like these would also make things difficult for teens looking for information or community their parents don't want them to have.
We run into the same problems as we do with laws requiring kids to get consent to create social media accounts, except on an even bigger level: an LGBTQ minor looking for community despite parent's disapproval, a sexually active teen wanting surreptitious information on birth control, an abused child looking for someone who can help -- all would be forced to ask their parents or guardians for permission to access the very apps that could help them obtain support.
* A two-year Department of Justice civil investigation found local police in Worcester, Massachusetts, "used excessive force and engaged in 'outrageous' sexual contact with women during undercover operations," USA Today reports.
* Advocates for the absurdly overreaching Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) are using the deaths of teenagers in a gross display of political propaganda.
* "The idea that phones are destroying attention spans or disrupts brain development has not been proven at all. The brain develops the way it does, because it's evolved over millions of years," Welsh neuroscientist Dean Burnett tells Wales Online.