In Florida, Senator Alexis Calatayud has introduced a proposal that could quietly reshape how millions of Americans experience the digital world.
The App Store Accountability Act (SB 1722), presented as a safeguard for children, would require every app marketplace to identify users by age category, verify that data through “commercially available methods,” and secure recurring parental consent whenever an app’s policies change.
The legislation is ambitious. If enacted, it would take effect in July 2027, with enforcement beginning the following year.
Each violation could carry penalties of up to $7,500, along with injunctions and attorney fees.
On its surface, this is a regulatory measure aimed at strengthening parental oversight and protecting minors from online harms. Yet it hits up against a larger philosophical and rights struggle.
For much of modern political thought, the relationship between authority and liberty has revolved around who decides what constitutes protection. Florida’s proposal situates that question in the hands of private corporations. The bill effectively deputizes Big Tech app store operators, such as Apple and Google, as arbiters of digital identity, compelling them to verify user ages and manage parental permissions across every platform.
Millions of Floridians could be required to submit identifying details or official documents simply to access or update apps. This process, while justified as a measure of security, reintroduces the age-old tension between the protective role of the state and the autonomy of the citizen.
By making identity verification the gateway to digital access, the law risks creating an infrastructure in which surveillance becomes a condition of participation. It is a move from voluntary oversight to systemic authentication, merging the roles of government and corporation in a single mechanism of control.
The proposal may collide with long-established constitutional principles. One of the objections lies in the concept of prior restraint. By conditioning minors’ ability to download or continue using apps on verified Big Tech platforms, the bill requires permission before access, effectively placing all expressive content behind a regulatory gate.
Apps today are not mere entertainment; they are conduits of news, art, religion, and political discourse. Restricting that access risks transforming a parental safeguard into a systemic filter for speech.
The burden falls most heavily on minors, whose First Amendment protections are often ignored in public debate.
Hellbound and Down 