As lawmakers continue to consider measures that would restrict the ability of app platforms to manage their ecosystems, ACT | The App Association remains concerned that such limitations would massively reduce marketplace trust. For many small app developers within our membership, this threat is existential – without possessing a well-known brand presence themselves, they rely on a trusted ecosystem to seamlessly enter the market, reach millions of potential users, and grow their business. Though proponents of the so-called platform competition bills, including S. 2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and S. 2710, the Open App Markets Act, repeatedly extol the pro-competitive virtues of reducing gatekeeper control over the platforms, they often overlook what platforms currently do to keep users safe and to create an ecosystem that users are actually comfortable transacting within. Without those protections and trust, the app marketplace is unlikely to remain a viable forum for smaller players to flourish.

With this document, we conduct a section-by-section investigation into one app platform’s guidelines (the App Store Review Guidelines) to assess how exactly S. 2992 and S. 2710 are likely to erode currently existing consumer protections if they are passed into law. What this analysis–which is not exhaustive and is only the beginning of the inquiry into how the bills would impact app store management–reveals should concern anyone who proclaims to care about a safe app store experience for users. Our annotations (in blue) suggest that the legislation in question likely renders vast portions of the current guidelines—even uncontroversial protections against manipulative marketing practices, deceptive monetization of device features, misuse of children’s data, and dozens of others—illegal outright or unenforceable without the platform initiating a costly legal defense in each instance. Even for the staunchest supporters of the bills, this analysis should provide good reason to question whether the legislation, as currently drafted, appropriately scopes prohibitions on plainly pro-consumer platform behavior. We hope these annotations add productive nuance to a discussion that too often exists in the lofty but vague realm of anti-Big Tech sentiment and consistently seems to ignore the common-sense mechanisms by which platforms ensure that bad actors stay out of the app store, maintaining a safe environment for developers who play by the rules.

Some of our key findings are that:

  • The bills could prevent app stores from removing medical apps that provide inaccurate information. The bills would prevent limits on device hardware and software features, even if apps use them to make erroneous medical claims or diagnoses.
  • The bills could prevent app stores from removing apps that request excessive battery resources or risk damage to the device. The bills could prevent app stores from limiting access by apps to device features, even when that access compromises user safety by imposing excessive battery demands.
  • The bills could prevent app stores from removing apps that rip-off users with deceptive subscription terms and conditions. Under S. 2710, such techniques may be considered “legitimate business communications” and thus protected under the bill.
  • The bills could prevent app stores from removing apps that spam or copy-cat other apps. The bills bar app stores from enforcing any terms that may discriminate among similarly situated apps, even if those apps seek to game the system.
  • The bills could prevent app stores from removing apps that misrepresent their data sharing practices. The bills force app stores to rely on hard-to-prove legal defenses to justify pro-privacy platform decisions.

You can access the full set of annotations by clicking here.