Lawmakers just advanced online safety laws that require age verification at the app store

A package of child safety bills is headed to the House floor following an hours-long session that left Democrats and Republicans divided. On Thursday, lawmakers on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce voted to advance the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act; Sammy’s Law; and the App Store Accountability Act, which would require app stores to introduce age-gating.

Several Democrats opposed the law, arguing it would prevent states from strengthening online protections for young users. KOSA has been introduced in several forms over the past few years, but has repeatedly failed to pass.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said the KIDS Act uses child safety as a “smoke screen” for the desires of Big Tech lobbyists. “What big tech lobbyists want is a national surveillance program where they can harvest the private and personal data of every American with zero actual protections for people,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She also called out Discord, which pulled back its plans for age verification after facing fierce backlash from users over concerns about security and privacy, as well as its partnership with the third-party verification platform, Persona.

“[Discord] tried to roll out this idea of a data verification or an age verification technique, but they did it in this way that was also very emblematic of what we’re against here today,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “What’s more shocking is that Discord made the decision to move forward with this after they had been hacked, and at least 70,000 users had their data stolen.” Last year, Discord said a “small number” of government ID images were exposed as part of a hack affecting a third-party customer service provider, which it has since stopped using.

Other rules bundled in the package would impose age verification requirements for app store downloads and purchases, as well as when accessing adult content online. In addition to limiting companies from designing their platforms in ways “that result in compulsive usage,” the KIDS Act also includes a provision requiring AI chatbot-makers to inform minors that they’re talking to an AI system, not a human. The KIDS Act passed the Committee with a roll call vote of 28 to 24.

The Committee similarly greenlit the App Store Accountability Act with a 26 to 23 vote, which would impose age verification requirements at the app store level, with the goal of preventing minors from downloading age-restricted content. It also signed off on Sammy’s Law, a bill that would require large social media platforms to give parents the ability to manage their child’s online interactions and account settings through a third-party tool. The House Committee didn’t hold a vote on the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) after the Senate’s Commerce Committee unanimously passed its version of the law.

Age verification at the app store level has become the subject of a heated battle between tech giants. While Meta and Spotify continue to advocate for app store-level age checks that would take some pressure off their services, the app store owners like Apple and Google are lobbying against that approach, which has shown up in states like Utah and Louisiana.

“Lawmakers continue spending time on bills that simply pass on the responsibility for child safety online entirely to parents, rather than pushing platforms to make their products safer for everyone,” Morgan Wilsmann, a policy analyst at the nonprofit think tank Public Knowledge, says in a statement. Wilsmann notes there are still some “bright spots” in the approved legislation, such as the bills that would force tech companies to make the design of their platforms safer for kids. “We hope Congress can push forward conversations around what actually perpetuates harms to kids online – namely, risky design features like live chat with strangers or endless scroll – rather than content young users may come across,” Wilsman says.