Tim Cook Goes to Washington to Fight App Store Age Verification Legislation

[Starfia]

Yes, which is why I said they were once happy. And they backed down because of the immense pressure from the public and industry members who knew it was a double-standard.

I'd say that's one interpretation of what happened – we can certainly argue about whether or why it was a double-standard. Even so, the notion then was that all scanning occurred on device to the furthest possible point before practical certainty that illegal activity was occurring, and even then, there was an intermediary step involving human verification, and all of it was associated with using iCloud for photos; not with using the Photos app. All in all, quite different from a situation where sending your ID or likeness out to a third party is the first step. At the most charitable, I don't think comparison of the two makes for much of a picture of hypocrisy.

 

[vantelimus]

The government has been trying to fight internet anonymity since the beginning.

That said, which ID do you use. A birth certificate has no picture. A school ID probably has a picture but doesn't have a birthday. But in any case how would you verify the school ID or birth certificate was real? Most kids don't show up in any of the databases, since it's kind of illegal to track kids in many states.

I suppose they could say "if you're old you have to prove it." It still becomes a problem of verification.

And would Apple be liable if, say, someone presented a fake ID? If there's no way to actually verify an ID (and there actually isn't an "official" way besides a stare-and-compare) then what?

There is no ironclad proof you are who you claim you are. It is harder to get the government to issue you a false ID than it was in the 20th century, but it is still possible.

 

[Art Mark]

But the important bit is why? I can see reasons m, but ultimately I’m not. I understand the complexity and cost in doing so, but if any company can bear the cost, it is the certain large tech companies. And I think there is a real policy benefit in doing this, just as many others do. Amazon, Costco, Walmart all have to check IDs for certain products that one buys online (and in person).

I think the real issue, beyond the cost of compliance which would not be insignificant but also impact the biggest players least, is that Apple doesn’t want to be seen as the bad guy. That is something I also understand. But Apple already gatekeeps against porn, for example. And certain gambling apps, at least in certain geos. Are you also against such?

If we as a society have, through our representatives, decided to do this and it does not violate the Constitution—which the Supreme Court has indicated it does not—Apple can lobby all it wants. But ultimately needs to start the work to get onboard. So
does Google, and others.

This isn't an issue that needs the federal government. Forcing AI labels on all AI material would be more useful. Parents should be trusted. Republicans would see this as 'local control and responsibility'. They may also not like the feds collecting even more personal data. You are asking for more and more government intervention where it hardly matters. Let parents be parents and let the issue remain free of the imbeciles in the current congress.

 

[code-m]

Sounds like the start of a great storybook series:

“Tim Cook Goes to Washington”

- To Fight App Store Age Verification Legislation
- To Convince Orange Scrooge

- To Present Gold Apple Trophy to Mr. Orange

- To Supporting Building a Ballroom

- To …

For those who didn’t catch the comical reference look up

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”​

 

[vantelimus]

I would rather Apple handle age verification than all the various applications and services. This goes back to the Apple privacy argument. Why give all these third parties access to age data when it could be given to just one (Apple).

If there is an age verification requirement, then I agree with this. If Apple is required to verify age, then I think app developers who require age verification should shut up about the App Store commission and realize that Apple is doing all the heavy lifting that makes your stupid niche app possible.

 

[ProbablyDylan]

If Apple is required to verify age, then I think app developers who require age verification should shut up about the App Store commission and realize that Apple is doing all the heavy lifting that makes your stupid niche app possible.

It's bad enough Apple thinks themselves a feudal lord, we don't need Uncle Sam validating it. Thanks!

 

[jarman92]

CSAM scanning was going to be part of iOS 15. Apple announced it, critics pushed back hard on the privacy issues, so Apple stopped developing it. It was all their idea though. And it was never implemented. (Announced August 2021 and canceled September 2021)

So Apple (admirably) changed course in response to feedback and you're still, 4 years later, criticizing them for it?

 

[jarman92]

I've looked at them, I tinker with them, some of them are fine, some of them are pretty opaque, definitely I can't get them to do what I actually want because they are often too binary.

So you know how to use them, you just find them insufficient. That's fair.

It's completely unreasonable to get the average parent to have to labour over all of these.

Hard disagree. If parents don't want to parent then they shouldn't become parents. It's never been easy and society isn't obligated to make it easy.

We're going to have to go through a period of floundering, of a mess of clunky bans and censorship and whatnot before the industry realises people are actually serious, and gets its act together to develop standards of online safety and responsibility. Like the movie industries. This is for kids, this is for teens, this for adults.

This is for kids and the parents of kids; it's absolutely not for me, an adult with no kids who doesn't want any. And I fail to see why I should be required to sacrifice my privacy and security—not a small sacrifice!—purely for the convenience of people who chose to be parents.

They could do it if they wanted to, they're just making too much money right now to want to.

Can't argue with that!

 

[CarAnalogy]

That’s like saying beer companies should be responsible for verifying age versus the store selling it. Not buying it.

That's about right. Apple's argument would work except for the fact that they have set themselves up as the exclusive distributor of all software on the platform. They have worked very hard to be the extremely obvious choke point.

They just don't want it to cut both ways.

 

[Elwe]

What does age restriction really do?
Does it really make sense that you can drive a vehicle at age 15.5, go to war at age 18 but cannot buy alcohol til age 21?
"We as a society" really needs to re-think of what personal responsibility and ownership means ...

Those are two separate questions (and a comment).

Taking the second question first . . . rationalization of when someone becomes an adult and/or becomes responsible for decisions as an adult would be . . . has been something that has been considered for centuries in this country. Literally. There are founding-era treatises on the subject. Generally, it appears that peoples/societies/courts/legislatures have resisted uniformity because we are just too diverse a people. With radically diverse priorities. I'm not saying this as "an excuse"; it appears to be an accurate, compelling reason. If I was emperor of mankind, I might set everything mentioned (and other things) at a uniform age. Probably no younger than 20 and no older than 25. This includes what you have written but also things like being able to enter into an employment contract (which in some places in the US happens as young as 14), being responsible as an adult for murder (in some places as young as 16), and everything in between. But I am one person. Someone who is 18, grew up in southern Appalachia and had to start bringing income to the family at age 12, knows how to operate heavy machinery, who has three young children and wants to marry his current girlfriend of 16, who is also the mother of one of the children . . . vs an 18-year-old who grew up in Manhattan who doesn't have a driver's license, who has never ridden on a public bus, who family is fabulously wealthy, and has never even considered working or being without healthcare and now wants to legally commit suicide because she doesn't think she is pretty enough. . . or the 18-year-old who is an "illegal immigrant", having been brought here buy her family at age 14, and has had to live in the shadows, and now wants to join the military . . . vs an 18-year-old Mennonite, who happens to be "developmentally challenged", never been to an outside school, and wants to marry a 60 year old . . . there are so many variations. Can a such a diverse populace of well over 300 million align all such important things to one age? Again, for simplicity of administration I would love to do that. We could all stop arguing about many things. But we can't so we won't.

On the first point . . . age restrictions really do quite a lot. Remember that a lot of medications are age prohibited. Both in terms of what you can take and when, but also who has to be informed. Also, age restrictions for things we as society have determine are negative (like tobacco consumption) have inarguably saved some number of lives. So restrictions can absolutely do "good" . . . and "harm". The major question here is if age restriction for access to certain Internet sites (and apps) is good. You should listen to a Supreme Court case (Free Speech Coalition v Paxton) on this issue in this last term. Or read the amicus briefs. There is some really good information there. In short, even if restrictions only stop 20% of some demographic from doing some activity, that can have a huge impact on "the problem" as a whole. Let's take porn. I'm an adult, and happen to be fairly libertarian (small l) about such things. But I work in an industry where I've seen some of the negative results first hand. And I have family and friends, particularly those who are parents, who are extremely upset about the impact such has in the lives of their children. I have at least two friends who I guess I would classify as porn-addicted, and both became so young. I can't image how much of a worse problem it would be if they has these modern AI tools as children. You might very well argue that they were going to develop these very real problems--I'm not just talking about porn in the abstract; I'm talking about the secondary effects of their very real addiction to porn and inability to "normally" interact with others in the real world--you might argue these problems were always going to arise. I'm not so sure. But at the very least, a delay in the access might have caused them to gain more of the formative experience that is necessary as a teenager before retreating into a fantasy world.

Reasonable people can disagree on all this. But there are very real problems out in the world. My first inclination is to be suspicious of anyone screaming "think of the children!" . . . but sometimes you really have to stop and think of the children. And not just you as you were as a child, but children in general.

 

[4tune8chance]

Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Washington, D.C. today to meet with the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the upcoming App Store Accountability Act, reports Bloomberg. The App Store Accountability Act would require Apple to verify a person's age when an Apple Account is created using a "commercially available method or process," and get parental consent for each app that a child under 16 downloads.

Cook conveyed to lawmakers that device-level age assurance proposals should not require the collection of sensitive data like birth certificate or social security number, and that parents should be trusted to provide the age of a child when creating a child's account. Any data used for determining age should not be kept by app stores or developers, according to Apple.

Cook also emphasized that age assurance efforts should focus on ensuring parents creating an account are adults, plus he suggested that parents should decide whether a child's age range is shared with developers.

Prior to Cook's meeting with the committee, Apple's global head of privacy, Hilary Ware sent a letter expressing Apple's concerns over the legislation. The letter said that the act "could threaten the privacy of all users by forcing millions of adults to surrender their private information for the simple act of downloading an app." Ware told lawmakers that There are better proposals that help keep kids safe without requiring millions of people to turn over their personal information," touting Apple's age assurance feature that "allows a parent to share their child’s age range with an app developer, without having to share sensitive, specific information like a birthdate or government ID."

Apple has been fighting the App Store Accountability Act because of its privacy concerns, and because it does not want to be legally responsible for verifying user age, obtaining parental consent, or ensuring that developers follow the rules, nor does it want to collect the required documentation.

To head off legislation, Apple has introduced new age assurance features, such as simpler tools for parents to oversee children's Apple accounts, new age categories for app content, and the Declared Age Range API that provides developers with a privacy-forward way to ensure kids aren't exposed to in-app content meant for adults.

Apple has argued that it already has extensive parental controls with Screen Time, and that the legislation would require it to collect excessive amounts of information from all users just to verify the age of children. Apple says that it could be required to collect data like a driver's license, passport, or Social Security number, which is "not in the interest of user safety or privacy."

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will consider the bill on Thursday morning.

Texas recently passed a similar bill, SB2420. Starting on January 1, 2026, Apple users located in Texas will need to confirm whether they are 18 years or older when creating an Apple Account. Apple will need to verify age and parental identity, and the App Store will need to provide additional information to parents.

Update: This article was updated with additional information from Apple on Cook's remarks.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: Tim Cook Goes to Washington to Fight App Store Age Verification Legislation

Whatever method is used to combat, on line predatory, manipulative, and misinformation is now being realised by governments as the writing is on the wall, parents want this behaviour to stop.

 

[bluecoast]

It helps to ensure that an individual is restricted access to something that, more than likely, they are not mature enough to full comprehend from a real-world view. Actions such as driving a car, drinking alcohol, even voting, are all examples of this - regardless of how well a parent does a commendable job.

Children in particular have less ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. This is normal for their development, but the issues arise when the fantasy elements distort reality.

The problem here is that, by their own admittance, Apple doesn't want to take responsibility. The reason? Most likely that they don't want to be at the centre of attention if someone was to fool the ID-proofing system.

Read this quote:

Note the use of "surrender"; clever jargon to make the reader feel vulnverable.

This is a terrible excuse. Millions of people have already 'surrendered' their personal information in an extra-ordinate number of ways and have done for years. To get a driving license. Just to set-up various internet accounts on their phone. They continue to surrender their identity when they walk into shops to buy things. They are on CCTV cameras. Members of the public record videos for social media. Data is exchanged 24/7 by large companies.

Parents still need to take responsibility when handing a smart device to a young person - they are responsible for upbringing of their child, not a government - but many of the current restrictions or preventative measures are simply a deterrent rather than an actual check. "Are you X age? Yes/No".

I’ve already surrendered the following to Apple:

My full name
Age
DoB
Address
Credit card details

And Apple knows what devices, apps, music & books I’ve bought, tv & music that I’ve listened to etc.

What part of people’s privacy does Apple want to keep us from giving to them that we haven’t already?

 

[coolfactor]

Cowards. They were once happy to scan everyone’s photos for CSAM, but they won’t check ID to help protect young people? Merely proves how much virtue signalling this company is will to throw around.

Apple thoughtfully designed CSAM to be very privacy-focused. Nothing left the device until it passed very stringent on-device checks. This is in contrast to how many companies do such checks *today*, and nobody is calling them out! The concern with CSAM was that, once implemented, it could be abused by third parties. Apple was not the bad actor, no matter how you choose to spin it.

Apple's current "Age Range" API seems like the right solution. They are not against age verification in and of itself. They are against how the government wants companies to implement age verification, which would require too much personal information that can specifically identify an individual. This difference is critical to understand this topic. The government needs to be educated, hence Tim's visit to Washington.

 

[mw360]

So you know how to use them, you just find them insufficient. That's fair.



Hard disagree. If parents don't want to parent then they shouldn't become parents. It's never been easy and society isn't obligated to make it easy.

That's not parenting it's IT. Why do tech firms get to decide what onerous obligations fall under the remit of parenting?

This is for kids and the parents of kids; it's absolutely not for me, an adult with no kids who doesn't want any. And I fail to see why I should be required to sacrifice my privacy and security—not a small sacrifice!—purely for the convenience of people who chose to be parents.

We can both play the "I don't care about your problems", game but I won't.

Instead, I'll point out it isn't for the convenience of parents, it's for the wellbeing of children, and everyone's a child at some point. Even people who'll grow up like you, could benefit if social media is properly regulated.

And maybe, as an adult, your mental health will be slightly better if it's harder to get on social media. Who knows.

Can't argue with that!

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Instead, I'll point out it isn't for the convenience of parents, it's for the wellbeing of children, and everyone's a child at some point. Even people who'll grow up like you, could benefit if social media is properly regulated.

So what you're saying is that we should instead be regulating social media, right? To me and I'm sure many of us that sounds more reasonable than surrendering even more personal info and identifiers to big tech.

We should be addressing the issue, not wrapping it in caution tape and sticking a bouncer in front of it to check ID.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Those are two separate questions (and a comment).

Taking the second question first . . . rationalization of when someone becomes an adult and/or becomes responsible for decisions as an adult would be . . . has been something that has been considered for centuries in this country. Literally. There are founding-era treatises on the subject. Generally, it appears that peoples/societies/courts/legislatures have resisted uniformity because we are just too diverse a people. With radically diverse priorities. I'm not saying this as "an excuse"; it appears to be an accurate, compelling reason. If I was emperor of mankind, I might set everything mentioned (and other things) at a uniform age. Probably no younger than 20 and no older than 25. This includes what you have written but also things like being able to enter into an employment contract (which in some places in the US happens as young as 14), being responsible as an adult for murder (in some places as young as 16), and everything in between. But I am one person. Someone who is 18, grew up in southern Appalachia and had to start bringing income to the family at age 12, knows how to operate heavy machinery, who has three young children and wants to marry his current girlfriend of 16, who is almost the mother of one of the children . . . vs an 18-year-old who grew up in Manhattan who doesn't have a driver's license, who has never ridden on a public bus, who family is fabulously wealthy, and has never even considered working or being without healthcare and now wants to legally commit suicide because she doesn't think she is pretty enough. . . or the 18-year-old who is an "illegal immigrant", having been brought here buy her family at age 14, and has had to live in the shadows, and now wants to join the military . . . vs an 18-year-old Mennonite, who happens to be "developmentally challenged", never been to an outside school, and wants to marry a 60 year old . . . there are so many variations. Can a such a diverse populace of well over 300 million align all such important things to one age? Again, for simplicity of administration I would love to do that. We could all stop arguing about many things. But we can't so we won't.

On the first point . . . age restrictions really do quite a lot. Remember that a lot of medications are age prohibited. Both in terms of what you can take and when, but also who has to be informed. Also, age restrictions for things we as society have determine are negative (like tobacco consumption) have inarguably saved some number of lives. So restrictions can absolutely do "good" . . . and "harm". The major question here is if age restriction for access to certain Internet sites (and apps) is good. You should listen to a Supreme Court case (Free Speech Coalition v Paxton) on this issue in this last term. Or read the amicus briefs. There is some really good information there. In short, even if restrictions only stop 20% of some demographic from doing some activity, that can have a huge impact on "the problem" as a whole. Let's take porn. I'm an adult, and happen to be fairly libertarian (small l) about such things. But I work in an industry where I've seen some of the negative results first hand. And I have family and friends, particularly those who are parents, who are extremely upset about the impact such has in the lives of their children. I have at least two friends who I guess I would classify as porn-addicted, and both became so young. I can't image how much of a worse problem it would be if they has these modern AI tools as children. You might very well argue that they were going to develop these very real problems--I'm not just talking about porn in the abstract; I'm talking about the secondary effects of their very real addiction to porn and inability to "normally" interact with others in the real world--you might arguing these problems were always going to rise. I'm not so sure. But at the very least, a delay in the access might have caused them to gain more of the formative experience that is necessary as a teenager before retreating into a fantasy world.

Reasonably people can disagree on all this. But there are very real problems out in the world. My first inclination is to be suspicious of anyone screaming "think of the children!" . . . but sometimes you really have to stop and think of the children. And not just you as you were as a child, but children in general.

Underrated comment.

 

[CapitalIdea]

Prevent children from taking adult responsibilities until they are of adult age.
Prevents adults from taking advantage of children as if they are adults.

That’s fine until you have certain people pretending that even adults can’t make their own choices when they agree with it morally, including what they feel is appropriate for their own children, and also being scientifically daft. Examples are include but not limited to: library books, STD education, MMR vaccines/faith healing cancer.

 

[Siliconguy]

What does age restriction really do?
Does it really make sense that you can drive a vehicle at age 15.5, go to war at age 18 but cannot buy alcohol til age 21?
"We as a society" really needs to re-think of what personal responsibility and ownership means ...

That has always been problematic. The drinking age once was 18, lowered at the same time as the voting age if I remember. Then the 18 to 21 set started plastering themselves around trees and into oncoming cars so they raised the drinking age back up to 21.

I also note that you can buy a rifle at 18, but it's 21 for a handgun. For that matter at age 19 I built a muzzle loading rifle from a kit then discovered I could not buy the black powder to feed it. Being in the military at the time was no help.

Certain trusts don't consider you to be an adult until you are 25. Renting a car requires you to be 21 in most states, and if you under 25 you get charged extra.

Adulthood is sort of phased in. Given the behavior of freshmen in college I quite under stand it. (I started college at age 27 and was quite amused at their antics.)

 

[mw360]

So what you're saying is that we should instead be regulating social media, right? To me and I'm sure many of us that sounds more reasonable than surrendering even more personal info and identifiers to big tech.

We should be addressing the issue, not wrapping it in caution tape and sticking a bouncer in front of it to check ID.

Sure, that'd be great but it never goes anywhere because of both unreasonable free speech absolutists and reasonable concerns about where boundaries should be drawn. We've had 20 years to work this stuff out and made no progress whatsoever while the problems of child sexualisation, distressing content, lawlessness, vitriol and radicalisation get worse and worse.

 

[Plutonius]

I think that it's probably a good idea but too easy to avoid.

 

[jarman92]

That's not parenting it's IT.

No, it's parenting. Just like it was at the advent of the radio, movies, television, video games...it's 2025, being a parent very obviously includes monitoring what your children do on their devices and online. Just because it's easier to socialize the burdens doesn't mean its the right thing to do.

 

[HouseLannister]

So Apple (admirably) changed course in response to feedback and you're still, 4 years later, criticizing them for it?

I was correcting an inaccurate claim. I have no criticism for apples decision with regards to CSAM. Not sure where you got that ridiculous hypothesis.

 

[rp100]

Mysteriously, parents are no longer able to parent their children and only a kind, loving, (soulless) 3rd party is able to save our children from the dangers of the world!

The government could not care less about the well-being of your child - government and big tech are slowly, generationally, wearing down people’s resistance to being monitored and documented. All the news, all the noise is a carefully crafted distraction designed to keep citizens bickering amongst one another.

 

[grammatica]

The USA needs comprehensive data privacy laws for everyone, not just children. A real solution involves parents needing to be more responsible and collaborative with some government regulation.

 

[JaydenA]

I would rather Apple handle age verification than all the various applications and services. This goes back to the Apple privacy argument. Why give all these third parties access to age data when it could be given to just one (Apple).

One feels that the current push to age verification will spread, no matter one's opinion this is a case where the Government overrules and does what it wants. Thus unavoidable; I feel that I too would rather the ID is checked in a double blind method from the phone's store.

Absolutely not the app to have ID or even facial scans, too much evil/clumsiness/greed/criminal-risk there.

But I would absolutely prefer it wasn't being rammed in. Sigh, I am getting far too old for this dystopia.