LOS ANGELES—The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has officially recommended in a new policy paper that digital platforms operating within the United States should deploy age verification measures in compliance with the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
Published by the FTC on Wednesday, the paper is an "enforcement policy statement promoting the adoption of age-verification technology." It explicitly promotes age-gating as a means to prevent minors from viewing potentially harmful content or material that is age-restricted, such as pornography. This statement comes weeks after the commission's leadership, chair Andrew Ferguson, expressed support for such measures during a public seminar on age-verification technologies in general.
AVN reported on the workshop, held last month, noting that no adult entertainment industry stakeholders were included in the panel. The only real critic of age verification on the panel as a regulatory tool was an expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. Besides that, the policy statement is a clear endorsement of age-verification tools across all aspects of the internet, including adult websites and mainstream social media networks that feature adult content (e.g., Reddit and X).
"Age verification can play a critical role in protecting children online and helping parents as they monitor their children’s online activities," the document reads.
It further states that it "will not exercise its enforcement discretion" as required by COPPA, which prevents online services from collecting information from people under the age of 13 on the internet without parental consent. The stated reasoning behind this is to "encourage the use of robust age-verification mechanisms."
The document states further, "In the coming months, the Commission intends to initiate a review of the COPPA Rule to address age-verification mechanisms."
While the full impact of this policy approach remains to be seen, it could come at the expense of the FTC opting not to further scrutinize potential data breaches and system failures involving age verification technology. For example, data breaches have occurred at age-verification providers, including a vendor for Discord and the company that developed the digital ID wallet app for the state of Louisiana.
COPPA violations typically enforced by the FTC involve the illegal or improper collection, use or disclosure of personal information from minors under 13, such as in the case of a hacking event or other data breach. The FTC indicates that COPPA enforcement will not be initiated as long as AV tech is used to determine a user's age.
