App store age-verification laws like those in Texas will result in costly children’s privacy compliance for general audience-directed apps, ACT | The App Association said Friday.
A New Hampshire state court on Tuesday allowed a consumer protection case against social media platform TikTok to continue, ruling the state has jurisdiction to bring the suit, and that the First Amendment does not bar it from bringing the claims. One claim involving the Consumer Protection Act was dropped, however.
Several advocacy groups filed amicus briefs supporting NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) in a case challenging a 2023 law requiring social media companies to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for children younger than 18.
Bluesky will verify ages to comply with the U.K. Online Safety Act, the social media platform said on its blog Thursday. The platform said it will deny access to adult content and disable direct messaging for users younger than 18 and those who don’t want to verify their age.
It's not just app stores that must pay attention to a crop of new age-verification laws in Utah, Texas and Louisiana, Orrick attorneys blogged Thursday: It's app developers, too.
Massachusetts should follow New York state in passing an age-verification bill to ban social media platforms from using algorithms to deliver content to users younger than 18, said Massachusetts Rep. William MacGregor (D) at a livestreamed Thursday hearing of the Joint Committee on Advanced IT, the Internet and Cybersecurity.
Arguing that the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) does enough to protect consumers, national tech trade groups and California business associations opposed a revised location privacy bill now pending in the California Senate. In a Tuesday letter to the body’s Judiciary Committee, ahead of a scheduled July 15 hearing on AB-322 and many other bills, the groups said they opposed the measure unless it’s amended.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision upholding Texas’ porn site age-verification law bodes well for dozens of similar state laws, but it might not apply meaningfully to app store age-verification laws, policy experts said during a livestream Tuesday.
Advocacy groups that disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld a Texas age-verification law for accessing adult sites (see 2506270041) argued the decision is significant because it could embolden other states to expand the definition of off-limits material, further challenging the First Amendment and ultimately letting politicians make content decisions. Another worry is the harm the decision could bring to the LGBTQ community, some groups said.
Adult website ICF Technology asked a federal court on Thursday to drop a suit against it for lack of jurisdiction. ICF Technology was one of four adult websites sued in the U.S. District Court for Kansas on May 12 for allegedly violating Kansas law when they failed to implement age-verification tools on their sites (see 2505130023).