ACT | The App Association Publishes White Paper Antitrust at a Crossroads: Protecting Innovation in the AI Era at AI Innovation Briefing on Capitol Hill
Today, The App Association released its latest white paper and research examining how policymakers can help preserve America’s global leadership in artificial intelligence innovation. Antitrust at a Crossroads: Protecting Innovation in the AI Era provides a landscape analysis of the global AI ecosystem and a detailed overview of practical applications for the technology today and in the near future, before concluding with guidance for policymakers. “As the global AI race continues to intensify, it’s essential that the United States remain [...]
Meta Takes its Texas Rodeo Global
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 imposes significant new burdens on them. Any app that receives a ‘parental consent’ flag for a user under 13 gains what U.S. law calls ‘actual knowledge’ of that child’s age—triggering [...]
Parents and Kids Need More Resources and Flexibility, Not Games of Liability Hot Potato at the FTC
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 measures, that misapply fundamental legal principles, raise significant privacy, security, and implementation concerns, and ultimately fail to deliver meaningful protections for children online. First, panelist Melissa McKay’s assertion that app [...]