Meta is trying to ‘offload’ kids safety onto app stores, Google says

While Meta, Snap, and X issued a joint statement praising the Utah bill’s passage, Google calls it “concerning.” Rather than protect kids and give parents more control, Google director of public policy Kareem Ghanem writes, the legislation “requires app stores to share if a user is a kid or teenager with all app developers (effectively millions of individual companies) without parental consent or rules on how the information is used. That raises real privacy and safety risks, like the potential for bad actors to sell the data or use it for other nefarious purposes.” Social media companies would be the real beneficiaries of the law, Ghanem writes, because they could “avoid that responsibility despite the fact that apps are just one of many ways that kids can access these platforms.” Both Meta and Google’s YouTube have come under fire in the past for allegedly not doing enough to keep its youngest users safe on their platforms by pushing videos of kids to potential predators or keeping teens in a content loop that makes them feel bad about themselves. Both companies have said they maintain robust policies and resources to create healthy experiences on their platforms.

“We welcome Google’s concession that they can share age information with app developers, and we agree this should be done in a privacy-preserving manner,” Meta spokesperson Jamie Radice says in a statement. “But with millions of apps on Google’s app store, and more added every day, it’s unclear how they’ll determine which apps are eligible to receive this data. The simplest way to protect teens online is to put parents in charge. That’s why legislation should require app stores to obtain parental consent before allowing children to download apps.” In the past, Meta has argued that the app store is the optimal place for parents to grant permission and to vet users’ ages before they ever download apps. This method would also protect users’ privacy, Meta global head of safety Antigone Davis wrote in 2023, because “by verifying a teen’s age on the app store, individual apps would not be required to collect potentially sensitive identifying information.” How exactly users’ ages get verified is a major concern for privacy advocates, but it’s one that’s not yet entirely worked out in some of the legislation. Utah’s, for example, says that app store operators can use either “commercially available methods that are reasonably designed to ensure accuracy,” or other methods to be determined and deemed acceptable by state regulators.

Google believes it has “a better way.” To Google, that means that app stores should only provide age assurance securely to developers that “actually need them” — meaning only for apps that offer risky content, and probably not for something more mundane like a weather app. In that vein, Google proposes putting more discretion on app developers, rather than app stores, to determine the appropriate protections to put in place for a given age group. “Because developers know their apps best, they are best positioned to determine when and where an age-gate might be beneficial to their users, and that may evolve over time, which is another reason why a one-size-fits-all approach won’t adequately protect kids,” Ghanem writes. Google is also proposing “clear consequences for developers who violate users’ trust” by doing things like “improperly accessing or sharing the age signal.”

Apple has similarly raised concerns about potentially excessive data collection. In a white paper announcing steps it would take to help protect kids online, including letting parents share kids’ age ranges with developers, Apple emphasized the importance of collecting just the minimal amount of data to protect users’ privacy.

“Everyone wants to protect kids and teens online, and make sure they engage with age-appropriate content,” Ghanem writes, “but how it’s done matters.”