Today, the Department of Justice expressed support for the “goals” of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S. 2992) and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (H.R. 3816). ACT| The App Association cautions against supporting measures like S. 2992 and H.R. 3816, which would dismantle the platform framework small app companies leverage to reach millions of consumers and clients across the globe.
Notably, the Department’s letter cautiously refers to the bills’ proposed benefits as “ha[ving] the potential to” make positive changes. The letter also more directly acknowledges that the text of the bills would not achieve their goals, conceding that the Department only supports “the principles and goals animating the legislation and looks forward to working with Congress to ensure that the final legislation enacted meets these goals.”
App Association President Morgan Reed said in response: “The Department hangs its hopes on a lot of ‘maybes’ and ‘potential’. At this point, the bills have significant privacy and security concerns, as well as ‘solutions’ that only work for multi-billion-dollar dating apps and gaming companies. We need the Department to support antitrust enforcement that would not enrich multi-billion-dollar companies at the expense of the smallest competitors on the app stores and their clients and consumers.”
App Association members are part of an ecosystem that employs more than 5.9 million Americans, across all 50 states, comprising a 1.7 trillion-dollar app economy. For app makers, the app stores are a key ingredient to their ability to continue this incredible growth because the software platforms that run them actively reject and remove bad actors and malware. The last thing App Association members want is for Congress to prohibit software platforms from engaging in the app store management functions they demand and pay for. Similarly, our members’ clients and consumers are not asking Congress or the Department to prohibit the platform privacy and security functions they rely on to keep their sensitive personal information safe on their smart devices.
Members of Congress need to listen to their constituents—the app makers and consumers that leverage smart devices every day—and ditch these ill-conceived bills so that they can focus instead on a comprehensive, national privacy framework.