Kim Carver, a legislator in the US state of Louisiana, added a provision to a child safety bill forcing Apple and Google to enforce age restrictions on downloads in their application stores. In other words, it would force Apple to make sure minors could not download gambling and casino applications – i.e., 99% of mobile games – that make up the vast majority of Apple’s services revenue. It would also make application stores play a role in enforcing age restrictions on social media applications, which makes sense because Apple and Google know the age of every one of their users.
Well, it turns out Apple was not happy. They sent out an absolute army of lobbyists – including a guy known for lobbying on behalf of truck-stop casinos, in case you were wondering about the type of people Apple uses for lobbying – to kill this specific provision. Carver’s provision would have breezed through the Louisiana senate, but it needed a key committee approval before being put up for a vote. And it’s this committee that Apple started heavily influencing and pressuring.
Carver began hearing rumblings that Apple was making inroads with the committee—his amended bill might be in trouble. Uncertain on how to proceed, he approached the chairwoman of the committee, Sen. Beth Mizell, for advice.
He declined to describe the substance of the conversation to The Wall Street Journal, but in the end, he promised not to object if she removed the app store provisions or support restoring them on the Senate floor.
“I made the choice to take the win that we could get,” Carver said.
↫ Jeff Horwitz and Aaron Tilley at The Wall Street Journal
This is not the first time Apple has pressured legislatures to drop bills it didn’t like. A famous case is the state if Georgia, which intended to pass a number of application store bills to open up the App Store in much the same way the European Union did with the DMA. Apple went absolutely mental in Georgia, including threatening to cancel “a $25 million investment in a historically Black college in Atlanta”. Apple won.
The way these sleazebag companies get away with such blatant corruption is by using third-party lobbyists, which technically are not employed by the companies in question, so no matter how low and sleazy these lobbyists go, the companies they lobby for can wash their hands in innocence and absolve themselves from any responsibility for the various financial and legal threats levied at underfunded, understaffed local legislatures. Spending a few millions on a local development project or whatever is peanuts for Apple, but a massive boon for a small community somewhere, so Apple pulling out means nothing to Apple, but would massively affect such a community. It’s not surprising local legislatures fold.
Circling back to the age restriction provision itself – telling stores what they can and cannot sell is an entirely normal thing to do, and happens all the time all over the world. It’s why in, say, The Netherlands, supermarkets are only allowed to sell “light” alcohol like beer and wine, with hard alcohol moved to separate liquor stores that have to be separate from the supermarket, so age restrictions are easier to enforce. There’s also just an infinite number of things you’re just not allowed to sell, period.
As always, Silicon Valley believes it’s a very special snowflake to whom regular, normal, widely accepted rules do not apply. Why shouldn’t a store selling gambling applications and similarly addictive and damaging applications have to do the absolute bare minimum to protect minors? Imagine the massive outcry if a Costco or Walmart was found to sell massive amounts of hard liquor to children – why should Silicon Valley companies be treated any differently?
It starts by talking about “downloads” but by the end it is talking about “selling”, which are two very different things. So which is it? The article itself is behind a paywall so that is no help at all.
In the United States, there will be a reckoning with Gambling at large. I don’t know when but it will happen. Legalized Gambling has exploded here. When I was a kid, it was only Nevada, and Atlantic city. Then came the state lotteries to raise money for the schools. Then came the Riverboat Casino’s because it was historical and a good time to tour the rivers in a relaxed atmosphere. Then the Native American Casinos( Much less judgement here, kinda we really screwed over the Native Peoples and continue screwing them over) Then the “Riverboat” Casinos stopped moving and were just Casinos. Then the Casinos didn’t have to be on the water anymore. Then slot machines didn’t have to be in a casino, and could just be basically anywhere. Then legalized sports betting outside of Casinos took off. So honestly, most people if they even see these apps as gambling are so desensitized to it, I really doubt anything will come of it. Only when the gambling addicts really hit bottom in 10-20 years will we start looking at how they were introduced to it all when they were 7.
The usual argument against age-gating software is that it requires the person doing the checking to have some knowledge of the user’s age and therefore identity, which is bad on freedom grounds and increases the value of the hosting company as a target for hacker… but Apple and Google already know who you are if you have an iPhone or an Android with gservices so this is moot.
That is not strictly true. My google account never required any verification of any of the details about me. I have multiple of them as well.
This is a prime example of a slippery slope argument, it’s already being done by them, so I can do it. Everyone has given up their privacy, so no one is allowed privacy. The government already spys on everyone, so they must be allowed to. Circular arguments, all of them.
JesseWagner,
Is your assertion that they do collect but don’t verify? When I go to create an account right now google asks for all this information up front.
Even if DOB is not verified, services like google do use it to censor content. Some videos on youtube show up as age restricted for me because I don’t use an account.
Lawyers could make identification more aggressive. Facebook requires submission of photo ids plus they check your information against 3rd party data brokers, similar to employment background checks. Even older “grandfathered” accounts are being pressured to upload more data.
https://www.reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/bkrkz1/is_there_anyway_that_you_can_bypass_facebook/
I imagine most of us are against this and pro-privacy, but if services are legally forced to verify dates of birth, compulsory identification may become the the norm and there’s no doubt it would have wider reaching implications for privacy and tracking than age access controls.
age-restricting pixels has nothing to do with age-restricting drugs alcohol or tobacco. the latter are (potentially) harmful substances that most 12 year olds cannot be trusted with. pixels are pixels. just like books. or thoughts. restricting them is censorship and/or mass surveillance.