Tim Cook’s lobbying hangs over a key kids online safety vote

At a congressional meeting to vote on the future of kids online safety, the most spirited debate of the day was about a bill that wasn’t even on the agenda and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

18 bills that aim to regulate the internet to protect children are now headed for a vote before the full Energy and Commerce Committee, possibly as soon as next month. From there, the bills could get a vote on the floor of the House, giving the chamber a chance to set the tone on internet safety legislation after leaving the leading bill passed by the Senate to languish without a vote last year. Meanwhile, several members of the panel voiced suspicion that Big Tech lobbying had seeped into the proposals and limited their scope, resulting in solutions that fail to get at the core issues making kids unsafe online.

The package includes a version of the leading Senate bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). But it’s one supporters say has been poison-pilled so badly that it would actually make things worse, effectively wiping out a slate of state laws that could even include some general consumer protection rules. The once-bipartisan KOSA passed out of the subcommittee with Republican majority backing in a party line vote, after former co-sponsor Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) panned the changes and accused Republicans of turning their back on parent advocates. Lead sponsor and subcommittee Chair Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) offered an amended version of the bill that made some small revisions based on parents’ input, and said he is open to continue working with them moving forward. The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), once a relatively uncontroversial and popular kids privacy bill, also received a party line vote in the subcommittee after adding a sweeping state law preemption provision similar to KOSA’s.

But the most interesting part of the three-hour meeting involved Cook’s surprise visit with committee leaders Wednesday. While discussing one of two bills that take different approaches to implementing age gating protocols at the app store level, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) lamented that the subcommittee hadn’t taken up the App Store Freedom Act she co-sponsored with Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA). The bill would force companies like Apple and Google to let users download alternative app stores and set them as the default. Trahan and Cammack say this would allow parents to set app stores with only kid-friendly apps as the default on their devices, side-stepping the issue of figuring out which apps within the general app store kids should be allowed to download.

“The App Store Freedom Act would address [much] of this. Because our bill would allow parents to actually create a marketplace where they would have apps that they knew were safe for kids,” Cammack said. “Today, you don’t have the opportunity to build your own marketplace. And instead we’re having discussions about whether or not we should empower Apple and Google to be responsible for age verification for these kids.” Cammack said this is the equivalent of “asking the fox to guard the hen house. The same people who have abysmal track records of protecting kids online, we’re now saying you’re going to be responsible for their data and for verifying ages, but you still have to keep using our app store and be using our marketplace.”

Both Cammack and Trahan painted the other proposals before the committee as well-intentioned, but ultimately marginal. “We need to address that the app store and the marketplace is broken. A monopoly is not going to fix it,” Cammack said. Trahan agreed: “Should we be collecting data at the device level? Should we be doing age assurance or verification at the app store level or the develop[er] level? How about we just enforce the antitrust laws that are on our books and we finally dispense with giving Google and Apple the sole ability to put a store on our children’s mobile phones.”

Brett Guthrie (R-KY), the chair of the full committee who met with Cook on Wednesday, admitted that the App Store Freedom Act came up in the discussion and that Apple is not a fan. But Guthrie insisted that the meeting had nothing to do with the reason the bill wasn’t included in the markup. He noted that Apple had concerns with other bills that were included in the markup, an apparent nod to the app store age verification bills that the company has generally opposed on privacy and data collection grounds. Apple did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.

Guthrie said he engaged with the sponsors in good faith, but that he wanted to keep this markup focused on kids safety, and their bill would allow many other kinds of third-party app stores beyond kids-focused ones, which required some further consideration. He also suggested that some of the subject of the bill seems to fit a different committee, which could raise a question about the jurisdiction of where it should be debated.

“From where we sit, you’ll have to understand that just the proximity of Apple being on the Hill yesterday as we’re debating this battery of legislation, and this bill, which I’m sure is one that’s hard fought by Apple and Google on the top of their list, it is suspicious that we’re not debating it like the others,” Trahan said. “All the bills that we’re debating today, they need work before we go to full committee, but this one isn’t even allowed to be discussed or to be debated, and that just breeds a bit of suspicion.”

Guthrie told the sponsors he doesn’t have any ulterior motives, and both Cammack and Trahan said they believed he was an honest person. “I don’t believe that people on this committee are acting in bad faith,” Cammack said. “I think the people acting in bad faith [are] Apple.”