Melissa McKay’s Post

Testimony from Chris McKenna: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings/protecting-innocence-in-a-digital-world FTC complaint against Apple: https://www.digitalchildhoodinstitute.org/accountability/apple/ FTC complaint against Google: https://www.digitalchildhoodinstitute.org/accountability/google/

Attorney General Alliance Derek Brown Gerald Roden Office of the Attorney General - FL Joel Wright Laura Marquez-Garrett Gentner Drummond G. Keith Pridgen, Jr. Jonathan Skrmetti

Thank you, Melissa. We’ve fought some hard battles. Apple and Google own too many policy makers at the state and federal level. Every state-level effort to pass common-sense legislation is met with a swarm of lobbyists who deceive and distract. Sooner or later, I hope lawyers figure out that the only way kids get the drugs (apps) is by shopping at Apple and Google. Who knowingly take a 30% cut from child harm. Let the courts hold them accountable.

Google, Apple, Meta, X, TikTok, Amazon, and X are all on the boycott list for various crimes against humanity. Continuing to use their products shows implicit support to companies that show time and time again to have no moral compass. Even if you don't have a paid subscription to any of these companies, using the tools funds them indirectly through your data that they sell. Note that it's not about being perfect. It takes time to move off the apps. We may never be 100% free, but try to delete/cancel/reduce by 70%. For Apple, cancel subscriptions and start buying refurbished. The important things is that people start moving. And if we can't deal with minor inconvenience in order to protect children? Then we need to stop blaming the companies and looking at ourselves.

Melissa, thank you for the timeline. "They knew. They chose inaction." That sentence needs to be the headline of every lawsuit filing from here forward. I wrote a long piece recently tracing this exact accountability chain. The New Mexico jury found Meta liable for child exploitation. The Béjar whistleblower testified that Meta's own internal research showed the harm and the company buried it. Two jury verdicts in one week. Over 40 state attorneys general with active lawsuits. 2,000 pending cases from parents and school districts. Your point about the app store layer is the one most coverage still misses. Everyone focuses on the platforms producing the harm. Almost nobody asks about the gatekeepers who distribute them, rate them as safe for children, and collect 30% of every transaction while claiming no responsibility for what's inside. Apple and Google aren't neutral infrastructure. They're curators with age ratings, editorial picks, and review processes. The curation implies responsibility. The 30% cut confirms it. The FTC complaints you filed are exactly the documentation trail that makes legal action possible. Evidence, dates, receipts. That's how accountability actually works.

Six years of congressional testimony, legislation, and formal letters - and the response from Apple and Google was silence. That track record matters when these cases go to court. The "we didn't know" defense doesn't hold when advocates were documenting specific harms in writing, repeatedly, at the highest levels. What New Mexico established with Meta is that internal research showing harm is enough to pierce the platform liability shield. Apple and Google have that same paper trail. The deeper issue though is that even successful lawsuits don't fix the architecture. App store parental controls are layered on top of operating systems built for adults - kids find workarounds in minutes. Real protection has to be enforced at the OS level, on hardware built specifically for children, not retrofitted onto a general consumer device. That is what we are trying to do at Cyber Dive with Aqua One.

Of course they knew. Should that really surprise anyone? The majority of society is all too willing to mistake loudness and arrogance for competence in all economic areas, rewarding these perpetrators with billions while turning a blind eye. It’s time to practice your discernment, because in the future, I refuse to see any more shocked faces when the inevitable consequences of what „conspiracy theorists“ told you years ago, unfold. They‘re just simple pattern recognizers, nothing more. Systemic change begins with confronting an uncomfortable truth, that most people would rather avoid responsibility, let things slide and cling to the delusion that everything will somehow work out. If you‘re really angry, I hope you know what to do and finally boycott. For the love of humanity.

The leadership of Meta, Apple and Google is as guilty as those who triggered the Holocaust, genocide and slavery for starting a crusade against children.

Companies will never care. They are capitalists and that drive to make money at all costs will cost lives, children and our society. There would not be seatbelts without legislation. They dont give their own kids tech because they know whats out there.

A class action lawsuit for trillions needs to happen. It didn't have to be this way. This was about greed and carelessness toward a class of people deemed to have no value beyond "user" to those with power over their attention.