- Meta has been pushing lawmakers to make Apple and Google’s app stores responsible for verifying age.
- Several states just introduced bills that would require parental consent for teens to download apps.
- Apple has squashed this attempt before, but this is a small win for Meta.
The backstory to the ongoing feud between Meta and Apple is so ancient and entrenched — like the Hatfields and McCoys, House Atreides and Harkonnen, or Katie Maloney and Tom Sandoval — that it’s hard to remember all the slights and tiffs along the way.
Here’s an incomplete backstory: Meta doesn’t like Apple’s tight-fisted control over its devices, which Meta says is preventing it from developing more features for its smart glasses. Apple’s Tim Cook has publicly taken swipes at Meta over its privacy stumbles. And in January, Mark Zuckerberg went for the jugular, saying on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Apple hasn’t “really invented anything great in a while.”
Vicious.
One front of the current battle is over who should be responsible for restricting kids and teens from accessing social media apps — something both companies argue the other should do.
Meta has published a blog post from its head of safety stating its position that the app stores — Apple and Google — should be the ones restricting app downloads for younger users. Apple has concerns this would invade privacy, and critics worry this would encroach on free speech.
And it appears Meta just won a small victory.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that nine states have introduced bills in the last two months that would require Apple and Google to take up the unwanted task:
Both Apple and Meta think the onus to verify user ages shouldn’t be on them. Apple last year helped kill a bill in Louisiana that would have forced app stores to handle age verification. Meta, along with social-media companies Snap and X, last week sent a letter to legislators in South Dakota arguing app-store verification would be simplest since app stores already collect user information. “It looks like the policy-debate equivalent of a game of ‘not it,'” said Kate Ruane, director of a free-speech campaign at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that has opposed many child-safety laws on the grounds that they are ineffective and infringe on free speech and privacy.
Keeping kids safe online is a multifaceted issue with no single good, clear answer.
Lawmakers are finding themselves vexed by how to come up with solutions to a problem their constituents clearly care about. According to a 2024 Pew Report, 38% of parents said they argued with their teens about screen time, and 43% said that it was “hard” to manage their kids’ phone use.
But don’t count this as a total win for Meta just yet. These bills are merely introduced, not passed, and a similar bill introduced in Louisiana was eventually shut down after intense lobbying efforts by Apple.
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