Meta testifies at Ohio Statehouse in favor of age verification in app store

Yahoo

a day ago

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Ohio lawmakers want to give parents more say in what their kids do on their smartphones and tablets. And Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is on board with the proposal.
Ohio lawmakers did pass a bill to require age verification in social media apps, but a federal judge struck that law down after social media companies challenged it, calling it a 'breathtakingly blunt tool' to reduce harm. Gov. Mike DeWine called for lawmakers to take a new approach to age verification for minors, and that is where House Bill 226 comes into play.
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House Bill 226 would require app developers to determine whether their app is likely to be used by children under 16 years. If so, the developer needs to let the app store know that it will need age verification before being downloaded. This bill would largely impact social media like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and X.
'Teens use more than 40 different apps a week, so that's a lot for parents and it's a lot of personal information that would need to be shared with each individual app to verify who the parent is and the child's age,' Head of Safety Policy for North America at Meta Jennifer Hanley said.
Hanley said she thinks this bill will be more effective, because it does not specifically call out social media apps.
'We've seen courts across the country say if you're looking at things selectively, examining the types of content or who the speaker is, then you're running into First Amendment issues,' she said. 'We think here this kind of addresses that and resolved some of the First Amendment concerns by making it speaker and content neutral instead.'
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Hanley said age verification in this form is what parents want, and points to Utah and Texas that have recently enacted similar laws.
But some leaders at the statehouse think that companies like Meta are simply punting the responsibility to keep children safe.
'There is certainly no excuse for these big social media, data companies, to not have some sort of guidelines,' Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington) said. 'They certainly know how to develop the algorithms to target minors and there's no excuse for them not also being able to use that as safeguards.'
Russo said she does think that this is a step in the right direction but does not go far enough.
'Do I think [HB 226] is going to be as effective as some of the other things we know [social media companies] have the capacity to do using their own algorithms? Certainly not,' Russo said.
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'We at Meta and other companies will still have a role to play in providing a safer, more age-appropriate experiences for teens and looking for those who are lying about their age,' Hanley said.
The bill still awaits both a House committee vote and House floor vote before being sent to the Ohio Senate for consideration.
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