Why age assurance laws matter for developers

Policymakers around the world are advancing age assurance proposals to protect children and teens online. Some approaches restrict minors’ access to certain services or content, while others would require devices, operating systems, or app stores to collect age information and pass age signals to apps and websites. These proposals are driven by serious concerns, but without appropriate scoping, they risk imposing burdensome requirements on open source software and developer infrastructure services that do not present the same risks to minors as consumer-facing platforms.