Meta’s push for Texas’s new age-verification law—requiring app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for minors—appears, at first, to be about child safety. In reality, it’s a strategic move to shift legal risk. While marketed as a way to ease compliance for smaller developers, the law [...]
At the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recent workshop, The Attention Economy: How Big Tech Firms Exploit Children and Hurt Families, panelists raised important questions about children’s online safety but offered few practical, evidence-based solutions. Instead, they promoted policies, such as the App Store Accountability Act and similar age verification [...]
We are excited to announce that ACT | The App Association has applied to join the European Telecommunications Standards Institute* (ETSI). This marks an important effort in our work to ensure that the digital standards shaping Europe’s future reflect the voices and needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). By seeking [...]
In April 2025, the World Institute on Disability (WID) released a white paper on accessibility in the app economy space titled Accountability Now: Enforcing Accessibility Standards In the Mobile App Economy. This WID report is remarkable in highlighting how the symbiotic relationship between developers and platforms has bolstered [...]