Apple reportedly succeeded in blocking a Louisiana bill that would have required iPhone makers to allow developers selling apps on its app store to use alternative payment systems, by threatening to shut down a Will Smith movie production in the state.
In 2021, Bayou State lawmakers were eager to approve a bill that would allow app developers to use alternative payment systems that bypass Apple's app store.
Apple, which charges developers fees to allow iPhone users to download apps from its app store, saw the bill as a threat to one of its main sources of revenue and stepped in. According to the Wall Street Journal.
Employees at the Cupertino, California-based tech giant reportedly told Louisiana House of Representatives senior member Tanner McGehee that moving forward with the App Store bill would halt production on the historical drama “Emancipation,” in which Smith plays “Whip'd Peter,” a former slave who was infamously photographed in 1863 with scars on his back.
“Emancipation” was shot in Louisiana, and according to The Wall Street Journal, Apple representatives reportedly told McGehee the company would be relocating the movie, which would hurt the local economy.
“He basically said if we don't kill this bill, he's going to kill movies and hurt the economy,” McGhee told The Wall Street Journal.
An Apple spokesperson denied any threats had been made to The Wall Street Journal.
“We have always conducted our business with the highest standards of integrity, and any allegation that we failed to do so on this occasion is false,” an Apple spokesperson told the paper.
The Post has reached out to Apple for comment.
More recently, Apple reportedly helped defeat another bill from Louisiana lawmakers that would have required the company to force smartphone users to verify their age.
Earlier this year, freshman state Rep. Kim Carver told The Wall Street Journal that Apple lobbyists had sent her a flurry of “panic” text messages after learning that the company would include an age-verification provision in a bill aimed at protecting children from the pitfalls of social media and technology.
Louisiana is one of the first states to try to force Apple to verify the ages of users of its products.
Child-safety advocates argued that Apple and Google, as monopolies of the smartphone operating system market, are in the best position to protect children's safety by requiring age verification.
That view is supported by rival tech companies including Facebook, Instagram owner Meta and Match Group, who say the burden should not fall solely on app developers.
“Rather than putting the onus on parents to upload sensitive information for every app their child uses or to provide identification to prove their child's age, the app store can provide a central place for families to do this,” a Meta spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal.
A representative for Match Group, which owns Tinder and Bumble, agreed, telling the WSJ: “Children's safety will be compromised if liability is limited solely to the developers.”
Under Carver's proposal, companies that fail to make “reasonable efforts” to verify users' ages would face heavy fines.
But Apple was furious about the bill, accusing Carver of including “poison pills from meth.”
Carver said Apple lobbyists had been bombarding him with messages “all day, every day.”
“At that point I thought, 'OK, that's the end of the story,'” Carver told the Journal.
The bill was passed unanimously in the House of Representatives. [without the provision that would have obligated Apple].”
Louisiana was the first state to pass a law requiring sites that host adult content to verify age by ID, and other states have since followed suit by approving similar laws.
In May, The Washington Post first reported that Google and Meta had spent nearly $1 million on lobbyists hired to fight a New York state bill aimed at protecting children online.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is already facing several lawsuits across the country for exposing children to harmful content and negatively impacting their mental health.
