Kristian Stout on Age-Verification Laws
ICLE Director of Innovation Policy Kristian Stout was quoted by South Dakota Searchlight in a story about proposed state legislation to mandate app stores to perform age verification. You can read the full piece here.
Kristian Stout of the Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit International Center for Law and Economics testified against the proposal. App store data on user ages can be unreliable, he said, and forcing companies to expend resources to create digital signals could stifle innovation in smaller companies.
Stout also talked through a few of the ways users can bypass digital signals. Users can switch their mobile browser to desktop mode, for example, “which makes a website think you’re not on a mobile device,” thereby preventing mobile device signals – and their associated age-gating content restrictions – from being sent when a user tries to access adult content from an app like Reddit.
“Smart kids know how to do this,” Stout said. “If I know how to do it and I’m 47, my 16-year-old son definitely knows how to do this.
Stout was also among the witnesses to encourage lawmakers to consider an approach that would place a premium on educating parents and children about online safety and the existing tools to track youth behavior.