Apple’s Hypocrisy Unraveled: The Company Spends Millions To Lobby Against Child Safety Mandates

At first glance, it might appear that tech giant Apple is adding new ways to reduce the addiction that comes with smartphone usage. However, a new report is shedding light on another concerning finding.

At one end of the spectrum, we have Apple spending millions to lobby against child safety mandates. This means killing bills promoting the safety of minors.

Thanks to the Wall Street Journal, we saw reports related to several American states trying to control smartphone usage by teenagers. To be more specific, one report details about Louisiana. Issues had to do with a bill requiring Apple to include age restrictions via the App Store. This way, individual apps would no longer be in charge of age limits.

Meta also found that an appealing decision and sided with the discussion as there would be a single place for parents to control social media rather than run around different apps for the same ordeal. Apple was included in this legislation and within no time, many from Apple made it clear that this was not the right call.

Many Apple lobbyists referred to this as the poison pill from Meta, a way to deflect attention from different challenges linked to child safety that the company was facing.

The rep added Apple was providing parental controls and outlining age details with various third-party platforms and hence sharing age-related information would be their privacy violation.

This means the bill might get into a lot of trouble and the state might be in even more trouble as the company could face legal action for getting on board with App Store requirements.

In the end, no requirement was included in the bill to include Apple’s App Store and it crossed the Senate with ease. We are yet to hear from Apple’s lobbyists about the matter but those who did come across the news simply mentioned that other states didn’t want it either.

In reality, Apple’s parental controls don’t stand where they should be. While the iPhone maker wishes to spend less in terms of lobbying as compared to Meta and Amazon, it’s still spending millions. Today, lobbyists are going as far as to offer investments in state education. The price is dropping legislations linked to the App Store.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World