(The Center Square) — A feisty battle is happening in states between app stores like Google and Apple and app developers like Meta. Both are spending and lobbying fiercely.
Currently, there are bills around the country working in favor of both interests. While each lobby and legislator agrees that social media is threatening child safety and that something must be done, none can agree on who ought to bear the responsibility.
In Louisiana, for instance, a bill passed committee which would require Google and Apple to verify the age of users and confirm parental consent for anyone under age 18, which would alleviate app developers — such as Meta — of some responsibility.
Last year, Louisiana Rep. Kim Carver, R-Mandeville, introduced similar legislation. His current bill functions to do what a provision of his 2024 bill would have done, but was snuffed out by Apple, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. Now, that provision has earned its own legislation — and this time Google is working against his measure.
Meta, on the other hand, has been working to secure legislation themselves and have indicate previous support of legislation similar to Carver’s. The social media conglomerate owned by Mark Zuckerberg is spending millions to push legislation in states and in Washington, D.C.
According to OpenSecrets, Meta currently has 63 federal lobbyists and has spent $7,990,000 at the federal level. It has spent more in the first quarter of 2025 than in any previous first quarter.
In Louisiana, Meta employs 12 lobbyists who have been paid at least $324,992 in total, according to Louisiana’s Ethics Administration — a very conservative estimate.
Meta has 13 lobbyists in Texas, 14 lobbyists in Ohio and four lobbyists in Alabama, all according to their state ethics administrations.
All of these states have had bills related to platform accountability, mostly incorporating Meta’s framework.
“There’s not enough attention on the real risks that these proposals create,” Kareem Ghanem, Google’s director of public policy, said in an interview with The Center Square. “These bills would do nothing to address people’s concerns. And in the process, they’re letting Zuckerberg and Meta off the hook by providing this false sense of security that no amount of age verification at an app store level can really solve.”
Google is urging legislators to reject the one-size-fits-all mandates like Utah’s App Store Accountability Act, warning such bills could actually increase risks to children and violate user privacy.
“Under these laws, they’d be required to collect age data from every user,” Ghanem said. “That’s unnecessary, it’s an invasion of privacy, and it creates all kinds of problems for small and medium-sized businesses. They don’t want to collect that data because it’s not relevant or necessary to providing a good experience—like, say, a weather app.”
Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and Snapchat disagree, and applauded the Utah bill.
“Parents want a one-stop shop to oversee and approve the many apps their teens want to download, and Utah has led the way in centralizing it within a device’s app store,” the companies said in a letter obtained by Fox.
The Utah bill would require app stores to share whether a user is a child or teen with all app developers.
“This level of data sharing isn’t necessary—a weather app doesn’t need to know if a user is a kid,” Google wrote in a blog post. “By contrast, a social media app does need to make significant decisions about age-appropriate content and features.”
In response, Google has responded with its own lobbying and a legislative framework focused on what it calls a more balanced, privacy-first approach. Federally, Google has spent $3,805,000 this year, according to OpenSecrets. According to Google, a bill that incorporates their framework has been introduced in Ohio, where the company is represented by 14 lobbyists.
Google’s framework would allow app stores to provide age signals only to developers who require them for safety reasons—and only with user or parental consent. The company says developers, not platforms, should be responsible for applying appropriate safety features when minors use their apps.
Meanwhile, in Louisiana, the bill under consideration would require app stores to enforce age restrictions and bar minors from accessing certain apps altogether. Whether that bill survives the full legislative process may depend on which tech titan gains the upper hand.
