Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner personally known as Texas Governor Greg Abbott urging him to veto laws requiring age verification for the App Retailer, escalating the tech trade’s battle over little one security regulation.
The invoice, handed with veto-proof majorities, would require app retailer operators like Apple and Google to confirm the age of each consumer. If the consumer is a minor, their account should be linked to a mum or dad or guardian, who would then should approve every app obtain — a function that Apple already gives.
The aim is to provide dad and mom extra management over their youngsters’s on-line exercise and to adjust to the truth that minors cannot legally consent to app phrases, in keeping with The Wall Avenue Journal.
The invoice was despatched to Abbott’s desk on Might 15, 2025, and continues to be awaiting his signature or veto. If signed, Texas would turn into the most important state to implement such a legislation. An identical measure in Utah has already handed and took impact Might 7, 2025.
Apple says privateness is in danger
Apple has pushed again onerous. Alongside Cook dinner’s private outreach, the corporate has deployed six lobbyists in Texas and funded native promoting campaigns.
One Apple-backed advert claimed the invoice was “backed by porn web sites,” a provocative message aimed toward swaying public opinion within the Austin space.
Apple’s most important argument is that the invoice would pressure it to gather and retailer delicate private knowledge, like authorities IDs or different figuring out data, from all customers and never simply youngsters. That would expose Texans to new privateness dangers, the corporate says, even after they’re downloading fundamental apps like a climate forecast or sports activities scores.
It is a acquainted sample. Broad surveillance or knowledge assortment measures are sometimes justified as mandatory to guard youngsters, even after they sweep in everybody’s knowledge and decrease the bar for privateness throughout the board
Apple already provides instruments like Ask to Purchase, which provides dad and mom management over what apps their children obtain. If a toddler tries to get an app or make a purchase order, the mum or dad will get a notification and has to approve it earlier than something goes by.
Apple already provides instruments like Ask to Purchase
Safari has built-in content material filters. Mother and father can block grownup web sites or enable particular ones, and Protected Search hides express outcomes. These device-level controls, locked behind a Display Time passcode, restrict on-line content material for households with no blanket age verify throughout the App Retailer.
However, this must be configured by the mum or dad. And, the Display Time password must be secured.
Meta, together with X and Snap, has supported payments like Texas’s that shift the burden of age verification to app shops. They argue that verifying age on the app retailer stage reduces the quantity of delicate data customers present to a number of apps.
Centralizing the method, the businesses declare, might improve each security and privateness. Apple contends that this method shifts an excessive amount of accountability onto app marketplaces and dangers making a honeypot of delicate knowledge that may very well be misused or focused.
A part of broader state regulatory push
Utah’s legislation and Texas’s pending invoice are a part of a broader push by state legislatures to control tech corporations within the absence of federal motion. If Texas’s legislation is enacted, it might turn into a mannequin for comparable efforts throughout the nation, forcing Apple and Google to overtake how their platforms deal with underage customers.
Cook dinner has personally intervened in coverage issues earlier than, together with lobbying on tariffs throughout the Trump administration and opposing anti-LGBTQ payments in Texas. His name to Abbott marks one other instance of Apple utilizing its government management to affect state laws that would have an effect on its enterprise mannequin and buyer relationships.
Abbott’s workplace says he’s nonetheless reviewing the invoice.
