- I'm not the biggest fan of hard cutoff
- addictive dark patterns which cause compulsive use should be general banned or age restricted no matter where they are used, honestly just ban most dark patterns they are intentional always malicious consumer deception not that far away from outright committing fraud. (And age restrict some less dark but still problematic patterns.)
- I think this likely will make all MMORPGs (and Roblox, lol) and similar 16+, I'm quite split about that. I have seen people between 14-18 get addicted to them and mess up their education path. But I have also seen cases of people which might not be alive anymore today if they hadn't fund a refuge and companions in some MMORPG.
- I guess if it can make platforms like YT, Facebook, Instagram, Snapshat etc. implement a "teen" mode with less dark patterns and tracking it would be good.
- The balance between proving your age and making things available and keeping privacy is VERY tricky (especially in the US) and companies, the government and spy agencies will try to abuse the new requirements for age verification to spy more reliable on everyone 16+.
- It's interesting how that affects messengers. Many have less dark patterns, some do not track users, or can easily decide not to track children. The aren't social networks per-se. But most have some social network like features. Even such which do not try to create compulsive use might still end up with it as long as their as is "live" chatting.