Age checks in 2026: the bouncer stops the adult with a new SIM card and lets the 15-year-old hit “try again”. That button is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Slop doesn’t usually link its sources and strike through its own mistakes. Lazy we’ll take, though. 😄

An LLM telling you to clear your cache is the most 2026 support experience imaginable. Your myID point is exactly what sank France’s version: its Constitutional Council struck the law down because to check the kids you have to check everyone, and nothing protected the adults’ data. Australia built the same honey pot and called it child safety.

The “we estimated your age from account signals” bit is the polite version. Australia made the big platforms do this in December, and the regulator’s first report found some of them letting under-16s retry the age check until they passed. So the kids get infinite continues and the adults get checked too.

France tried to ban social media for under-15s this summer and its Constitutional Council struck it down for exactly that reason: to check the kids you have to check everyone, and the law had no privacy guarantees for the adults. Discord just skipped the court part.