They’re complying in advance of government demands, as these kinds of age verification laws are becoming more common. Even if their intent is to protect children from child predators, I can’t help but wonder how this is supposed to help in any way. There are workarounds for these kinds of age verification measures, such as using photos of others, AI generated faces, etc. If kids find themselves unable to work around the age verification, how likely do you think it is that they pursue other, potentially much less safe, social media platforms? How likely is it that a kid that swaps to a shadier alternative is going to discuss their experiences with their parents/guardians? All I see this doing is causing kids to move to worse regulated platforms where they will be less safe from exposure to predators, meanwhile the adults who do actually go through the age verification are having their privacy compromised. I don’t believe that this move actually has anything to do with the safety of children, and rather has much more to do with tying your legal identity to your online identity. The only actual solution, and I really do mean this, is for parents to be involved in their kid’s online lives.

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I don’t think it’s especially egregious for a company to advertise it’s new hardware on it’s platform. I do think that the form of system messages is unfortunate though.