California law puts age checks on devices, raising beef between Big Tech, Hollywood

Who controls California? One might think the answer is the Governor, on behalf of the people. Another possible answer is the tech barons of Silicon Valley, who are among the world’s richest men. But the Sunshine State is also synonymous with Hollywood, where major movie studios created the world’s most powerful dream factory.

Now, the movies are wading into the debate over California’s age assurance legislation, setting up an epic clash of the titans that would make George Lucas proud. A piece from Politico says the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the leading advocate for film, television and streaming productions, are urging lawmakers to reject a bill that cleared the State Assembly over the weekend and has gone to Newsom’s desk for signature.

The bill from Democratic state Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, AB 1043, won quick support from the tech industry – including giants such as Meta and Snap, which have fought to quash age assurance laws around the world through their legal organ, NetChoice. (Notably, California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code.) They say the new bill offers a “more balanced and privacy-protective approach because it allows kids to download apps without parental consent,” unlike age check laws in Utah and Texas.

Why, you ask, are major social media platforms suddenly supporting age assurance bills? In Wicks’ bill, they have arrived at what they have long pushed for: age assurance at the device level. AB 1043 would require “an operating system provider, as defined, to provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder, as defined, to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.”

The age bracket defined at the initial setup would then be provided to parties that request a signal, “via a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface regarding whether a user is in any of several age brackets, as prescribed.”

In other words, the law would put age certification further up the tech stack – and absolve platforms or apps themselves of liability, surely to the great relief of Mark Zuckerberg. Nor does it require biometrics. Instead, it trusts parents to truthfully state their kids’ age so they can be sorted into one of four age brackets. (This raises the question of how to verify that the adults are as old as they claim.)

For its part, the MPA argues that the law would override their existing kids’ safety measures. In its letter discouraging support for Wicks’ bill, it says device-based age checks could cause confusion – “for example, if parents and kids had separate Netflix profiles under one account that’s logged in on multiple devices.”

Also absent from the debate is Apple, which is both app store and OS, thereby rendering it a somewhat moot point where the age check goes – unless it’s on the services themselves, which is Apple’s preference.

Newsom’s deadline for signing bills is October 13.

Article Topics

age verification  |  California  |  device-based age verification  |  legislation  |  United States