The online world has evolved at a remarkable pace. In just a few decades, digital platforms have reshaped how people communicate, learn, shop, and build community. Lawmakers, understandably, have struggled to keep up with some of the new risks and harms that have accompanied our evolving digital landscape. Much of today’s technology policy debate reflects a genuine effort to address real concerns about issues like privacy and children’s safety online.
But not every attempt to catch up moves policy in the right direction. In fact, some proposals risk taking us backward, undermining existing protections and entrenching the very companies policymakers say they want to rein in. Take, for example, the App Store Freedom Act and the App Store Accountability Act, two prominent bills seeking to regulate app stores.
While these different bills pull in opposite directions, both share a striking irony. At a moment when Congress is scrutinizing the power of dominant platforms and their impact on families, children, and consumers, these proposals would weaken privacy and security protections that Americans depend on. Simultaneously, these proposals risk further empowering large tech companies like Facebook, which owns platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as Spotify and Epic Games, that have spent years resisting responsibility for the online environments they have created.
On the one hand, the App Store Accountability Act seeks to mandate that app stores act as digital gatekeepers in the name of children’s online safety. It would require app stores to verify users’ ages. This may sound like a direct response to parents’ concerns, but it misplaces responsibility and fails to address the dangers children face online. Even on its own terms, the approach falls short. Children could still access the same platforms and content through web browsers, gaming consoles, smart TVs, and other channels outside the bill’s scope, all while instituting a privacy-invasive age verification regime for users.
What’s more, this proposal cuts families out of the decision-making process about their children’s online activities, gutting parental rights in favor of a heavy-handed government mandate instead. In practice, requiring app stores to verify users’ ages creates a system that empowers Big Tech companies to continue harming children while stripping parents of control over when and how their children’s private information is shared. The result is a regulatory framework that poses risks to families and children’s privacy without closing the most obvious loopholes.
Meanwhile, the App Store Freedom Act would prohibit app stores from serving as a centralized enforcement point for security, privacy, and parental controls. The bill would give social media platforms and similar companies more control over how they charge users, collect data, and distribute apps, all while rolling back privacy and security safeguards consumers rely on. This change would break app stores’ review systems that screen for malware, enforce baseline data protections, and provide parents with tools to manage what their children can download and use. Mandating broader access, alternative app distribution channels, and reduced oversight means more opportunities for fraud, data abuse, and malicious software.
Viewed individually, the App Store Freedom Act and the App Store Accountability Act take very different approaches. One weakens app store oversight while the other imposes new gatekeeping obligations in the name of children’s safety. But taken together, they reveal a shared and troubling goal. Both dismantle existing privacy and security safeguards that consumers rely on to the benefit of powerful corporate interests.
It is no coincidence that both proposals are supported by many of the same large technology companies, including Facebook, Spotify, Epic Games, and dating-app conglomerates such as Match Group. For platforms facing sustained scrutiny over addictive design, harmful content, and safety failures involving minors, these bills offer pathways to shift responsibility away from platform-level choices and onto others.
It is essential for policymakers to recognize that under both bills, children, families, and consumers lose access to protections they currently rely on, whether through weakened security standards or privacy-invasive requirements that fail to meaningfully improve safety. The only consistent winners are large corporate interests that gain greater freedom from scrutiny while preserving business models that have contributed to today’s online harms.
Parents are not asking Congress to dismantle existing safeguards or to adopt symbolic fixes that can be easily bypassed. They are asking policymakers to focus on where harm actually originates: platform design choices, data practices, and content systems that shape children’s experiences online. Weakening app store protections does not rein in Big Tech. It risks doing the opposite by breaking essential protections and insulating powerful platforms from responsibility.
Driena Sixto is the former spokesperson for Turning Point Action and currently serves as Spanish Media Director for the Lincoln Media Foundation.
