The fight over a key internet protection for children is ramping up in Washington, where Big Tech companies are pinning the responsibility on each other as lawmakers push for stricter requirements.

After months of action in the states, age verification legislation made its way to Congress last week, when Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. John James (R-Mich.) introduced a bill that would put the onus on app stores run by Apple and Google to verify all users’ ages.

“Kids cannot consent — and any company that exposes them to addictive or adult material should be held accountable,” James said, adding the bill “holds Big Tech companies to the same standard as local corner stores.”

The issue is uniquely pitting some of the country’s largest technology firms, including Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, against other tech giants.

Meta is part of a new lobbying group, The Coalition for Competitive Mobile Experience, which launched in Washington last week with age verification on the app store as one of its main policy goals. The coalition is also focused on anticompetitive practices, and its executive director, Brandon Kressin, argued better age verification would exist if there was not "a lack of competition" among the app stores.

The coalition maintains app stores are best suited to handle age verification because they already have the age data, while Apple and Google argue the approach would still require sharing data with app-makers.

Lee and James’s bill, titled the App Store Accountability Act, would be the first of its kind at the federal level. It would require app stores to determine a user's age “category,” which differentiates age groups younger than 18, and then send the data to app developers.

Parents or guardians would also need to give permission for users who are minors to access the app store. This is aimed at disrupting "the child-to-stranger pipeline,” Lee explained in an op-ed........

© The Hill