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. In this blog post, we’ll provide an overview of what developers should know and how to engage.
The harms these laws aim to address are serious and deserve attention. Grooming for sexual purposes, exposure to violent content, and online bullying are just some of the risks young people are facing online. At the same time, participation in online communities, including open source software development, can be an important part of a young person’s education and social life. When trying to strike a balance between freedom and protection, policymakers are not always aware of how their proposals could affect developers or how the open source ecosystem operates.
