BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Senators on the Alabama Senate Committee on Children and Youth Health voted on Friday to advance a porn device-level filtering bill and a measure requiring app stores to conduct age checks. Both bills, SB 186 and SB 187, were introduced by conservative Sen. Clyde Chambliss of Prattville, Ala., north of Montgomery.
According to the Alabama Political Reporter, the bills passed easily. They go before the whole body on a second reading.
If passed, Senate Bill (SB) 186 would mandate manufacturers of mobile devices, including phones and tablets, to sell devices with parental filters or other anti-porn content filters activated at the point of sale. This aims to prevent minors from accessing age-restricted materials.
A password must be given to a legal parent, guardian or adult customer to deactivate the pre-enabled parental filters and turn off the content filter. Violators of SB 186 could be sued for civil penalties.
SB 187 requires age verification for mobile app stores, including the Apple App Store and Google Play. This bill is part of a national trend of legislation targeting age verification at the app store level to block minors from downloading applications that could facilitate exposure to age-restricted content.
Such apps that are more likely to expose a minor to age-restricted content are mainstream social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X.
“What we’re dealing with here today is a digital pack-a-sack where kids can go to these stores and obtain things that their minds are not yet developed enough to handle,” Sen. Chambliss said while presenting the measure. A key source of opposition to the bill is NetChoice, a trade group representing mainstream technology companies like Meta Platforms, Apple and Google.
Justin Hill, a lobbyist retained by NetChoice to testify on behalf of the trade group, said during the hearing, “I’ve worked on this same bill in all those states just listed, and those representatives and senators agreed there were First Amendment issues with this bill because you have to cast a wide net across all users to make them prove they are an adult before they have access to information.”
Note that Hill, while representing a trade group that has sided with adult entertainment companies on the issue of porn-specific age verification, praised Alabama lawmakers for advancing age verification legislation that led to companies like Aylo, parent of Pornhub, geo-blocking their websites for the entire state’s digital space.
