Alabama House Bill 173 could keep adults from privately browsing online

A version of the following public comment was submitted to the Alabama House Children and Senior Advocacy Committee on February 3, 2026.

The goal of House Bill 173 may be to prevent teens from accessing adult-only content and reduce the number of notifications sent to their devices. However, in practice, HB 173 risks also limiting adults from accessing popular digital services and reading or writing constitutionally protected speech unless they submit to intrusive age verification. 

If HB 173 is implemented, all users in Alabama would only be able to access the child-focused experience of a platform until they verify their ages. This would effectively hide away a large swath of constitutionally protected speech. Such a requirement has previously been found to violate the First Amendment and is an unnecessary requirement to achieve the bill’s aim. 

Requiring platforms to create two experiences through default settings and notification requirements would also be costly to build and particularly burdensome for smaller developers that lack the resources of major platforms. To comply with HB 173, developers would need to build and maintain separate feature sets and notification rules keyed to age, and every new feature would need to be designed, tested, and documented twice. Companies must either create Alabama-specific versions of their products or simply apply the dual-experience nationwide to avoid fragmentation. 

Large platforms may be able to absorb the costs of creating two distinct user experiences, but smaller developers lacking the necessary resources may block minors or exit Alabama entirely, turning these regulatory demands into a de facto barrier to entry. 

Rather than imposing these obligations on all Alabama users and pushing high costs onto small developers, we urge this committee to utilize and promote already existing tools available to parents, such as parental controls and screen time limits. These tools can be flexibly adapted to individual preferences without creating constitutional issues. Forcing all users to submit to age verification is no substitute for parental involvement and choice.

For these reasons, we urge this committee to reject the dual-user experience and age verification requirements outlined in HB 173.

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