One of the hallmarks of adulthood is the hard-learned lesson that actions matter more than words. Promises and platitudes can seem powerful, and are often momentarily comforting, but they mean exactly nothing if the individuals and entities making them continually fail to deliver. That’s just one reason why so many consumers may lose faith in both Apple and Google’s commitment to their children’s safety. Why? Because both app stores are knowingly allowing kids to download dating apps for adults.
Admittedly, no parent should cede their child’s safety to a stranger, and certainly not to profit-motivated corporations with the well-demonstrated ability to dominate the attention of kids, stimulate their adrenal glands, and influence their discretionary spending. A child’s safety, growth, and happiness are a parent’s responsibility, and so, too, is the money you entrust them to spend. Your kids. Your choice. Your money.
In the real world, however, parents are busy and burdened, threats to children’s safety and wellbeing abound, and there is never enough time. Short of trashing their phones, tablets and computers – and yes, it is tempting – and segregating them from every one of their similarly tech-saturated classmates and friends, there isn’t really that much you can do. So, you do what you can, and that generally means polling friends and doing internet research. And, yes, it means largely ceding your child’s online safety to corporations run by strangers.
On claims and confidence, Apple and Google would surely share the blue ribbon. If you were to grade either company on the sheer volume, breadth, and frequency of their boasts about just how much they “care” about your children and their online safety, you might feel pretty comfortable. Or, if you judged them solely on the veritable fortunes they spend annually to convince you and others that they have children’s welfare in the forefront, then you might feel confident and encouraged.
Sadly, for Google and Apple – and certainly for all of us – it’s their sincerity that seems lacking. Because sincerity, which is really just sentiment buttressed by action, can always be measured.
Relentless self-heralded concerns for your children aside, how best might one judge Google and Apple’s sincerity on the subject of online safety? Perhaps we’d look to their repeated silence – and total inaction – when prolific developer, Match Group, has asked both companies to properly age-categorize their stable of adult dating apps, which includes Tinder, Hinge, Match, and OK Cupid.
It’s not an idle request. Match has spent millions annually actually protecting kids, and, among other actions, has employed a high tech network of automated and manual “moderation and review tools, technologies, processes and policies” to “prevent, detect and remove people who engage in inappropriate behavior” on their applications. As a result, it has succeeded in blocking and removing individuals under 18, as well as registered sex offenders, those who have been convicted, or even plead no contest to a felony, violent or sexual crime, and “anyone suspected of sex trafficking.”
Match’s repeated requests of Apple and Google to accurately list their apps as 18+ also aren’t solicitation of favor; Match is a high-paying client that forks over 30% of its earned fees for the privilege of being listed on those two app stores, which renders their inaction offensive, and perhaps even actionable.
Doing the right thing should cost nothing. And endlessly, and expensively, declaring yourself to be a champion of a safe community for children while at the same time undermining that safety is reckless and scary hypocrisy. The simple alternative would be to listen to the app developers.
Apple and Google want to be in total control of the apps that appear on their app stores, even if that means deciding that a company’s products are in fact suitable for children (17+) when a given company has declared that they are not suitable for anyone under the age of 18. This is a real problem for Match Group, and it has real harms associated with it, all of which stem from Apple and Google exerting absolute dominance in the app ecosystem and categorically refusing to establish anything even approaching a partnership with app developers. Instead, Apple sneakily funds The App Association, which advocates against regulating app stores “on behalf of app developers,” but even the courts agree – Apple cannot be permitted to escape accountability for its actions.
Next time you hear Apple or Google boast of their child-safety concerns, you might ask why both companies are enabling potential child predators on Match Group’s dating apps by allowing boys and girls under the age of 18 to download the apps and build profiles, against the company’s wishes. As Congress debates age verification legislation like the App Store Accountability Act, policy makers would do well to take note of this unthinkable behavior on the part of Apple and Google.
Terry Schilling is the president of the American Principles Project.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org
Agree/Disagree with the author(s)? Let them know in the comments below and be heard by 10’s of thousands of CDN readers each day!