Dear Majority Leader Thune, Minority Leader Schumer, Chair Cruz, Ranking Member
Cantwell, Speaker Johnson, Minority Leader Jeffries, Chair Guthrie, and Ranking Member
Pallone:

We write on behalf of a broad coalition of child-safety advocates strongly urging you to oppose
the “Parents Over Platforms Act” (POPA, S. 4349/HR. 6333), recently introduced by Senators
Jerry Moran and Jacky Rosen and Representatives Auchincloss and Houchin. We share their
commitment to protecting children online. But a careful reading of the text shows that POPA
was not written for families. It was written for the tech industry.
The App Association and the Chamber of Progress—trade groups representing Apple and
Google—have enthusiastically endorsed POPA. Nearly every reputable child-advocacy
organization opposes it. When companies that have consistently failed to protect children
from app-store harms enthusiastically endorse legislation, there is cause for alarm. The bill
text makes clear why they are cheering.

The coverage framework is built on an honor system. Under Section 102(b)(1), developers
simply self-report whether their app qualifies as a “Covered Application.” There is no
verification process and no penalty for opting out. Even worse, the bill creates the perverse
incentive for developers to eliminate any child protection they may have. By exempting from
coverage every app that provides the same experience for a young child as an adult (see
definition of covered application), the bill allows developers to avoid regulation by getting rid of
existing protections for children. That means POPA will result in worse experiences for kids
online than they currently have. Since POPA’s core obligations apply only to limited
applications that developers voluntarily classify as adult-only or as offering differentiated
experiences for minors, the protections are largely illusory.

The “age-verification” requirement is weak by design. Users are only required to “declare their
age,” with no obligation to actually verify it. Worldwide studies consistently show that roughly
30 percent of children misrepresent their ages online. Relying on self-reported age is not a
protection. It is the status quo that produced the crisis in the first place.

Two decades of advances in age-verification technology make it entirely feasible to verify age
once, securely, at the app-store level, the single most logical and least privacy-invasive place to
do it. That is what the App Store Accountability Act would require, real age verification, and we
strongly endorse that legislation.

POPA also allows Apple, Google, and other companies to continue entering contracts with
minors. Under the bill, children can be enrolled in lengthy, non-negotiable terms of service that
include arbitration clauses, liability waivers, recurring payment terms, and broad data-collection
permissions, often granting developers access to a child’s location, contacts, photos, microphone, and camera. This directly conflicts with the basic legal principle that minors lack capacity to
enter binding contracts.

POPA also does nothing to fix the broken app rating system that parents rely on every
day. Under the current regime, developers rate their own apps, and the ratings are routinely—
and spectacularly—wrong. Tech Transparency Project investigations this year identified 47
nudify apps in Apple’s App Store and 55 in Google Play–over 30 were rated as suitable for
children. These apps allow users to create non-consensual sexual imagery, and they have
collectively been downloaded more than 705 million times and generated over $117 million in
revenue, a share of which Apple and Google take directly.
The ratings failures extend far beyond nudify apps. The Wall Street Journal found that 1 in 4
apps rated as safe for children actually contained violent or sexual games, anonymous chat, and
suggestive content. An independent analysis found that 45% of the top 500 grossing apps carry
App Store age ratings lower than the minimum age the developers themselves require in their
own terms of service, and 74% carry ratings lower than their own privacy policies allow.
POPA is silent on all of this. It contains no requirement for accurate ratings, no meaningful
safety disclosures, and no independent review. The App Store Accountability Act, by contrast,
requires accurate, highly visible age ratings and safety disclosures so parents know what their
children are downloading before they download it. POPA’s silence on ratings would protect
developers and app stores at the expense of the parents and children they claim to serve.
POPA’s liability provisions ensure that no one is held accountable when protections
fail. Section 201 shields app stores from liability for any erroneous age signal, any developer
misconduct, and any failure to provide age verification attributable to “reasonable technical
limitations or outages,” no matter how routine or preventable. App stores are explicitly not
required to proactively identify which apps are covered. A “good faith effort” is all that is needed
to claim full immunity. Enforcement is limited to the Federal Trade Commission; there is no
private right of action and no role for state attorneys general. The bill does not even take effect
until 24 months after enactment, allowing ongoing harms to persist for two more years.
Most damaging of all is Section 203, which bars states from maintaining or enforcing any law
“related to the provisions of this Act.” This sweeping preemption wipes out stronger protections
already on the books in UT, TX, LA and elsewhere, and prevents any state from doing better in
the future. No parent asked Congress to strip their state of the ability to protect their children.
We urge you not to advance this legislation. Families do not need another framework
designed to protect platforms from accountability. They need a real solution, and one already
exists. The App Store Accountability Act was developed over several years with input from
dozens of child-safety experts and legal scholars, is backed by more than 170 advocacy
organizations, and is supported by 88 percent of American parents. It has already passed in Utah,
Texas, Alabama, and Louisiana with broad bipartisan support, and is pending in Congress. We
urge you to support the App Store Accountability Act and reject the Parents Over Platforms Act.