Something tells me that this ain't gonna work. Kids and teens are more inventive than they probably realize.
So that the browser could ask: Hey government, is this user above 18? And the government just responds with yes or no.
Sites would then only need to whitelist browsers with this check an merely see an “allowed” claim for whatever type of site they have.
Parents or users could use parental controls to “allow” or “block” certain categories, meaning website creators wouldn’t even get any info on the user.
If a kid thinks like an adult, behaves like an adult and can't be distinguished from an adult from their online presence, let them use the chatbot. On the other end, I wish they'd flag immature adults as kids as well.
18 is an arbitrary number, and if we have more appropriate ways to judge if someone is ready or not (assuming their check is worth its salt), it should be fine to defer to that.
It's not like they're going to a bar to do tequila shots or scam retirees for insurance money.
Good, privacy preserving age check could be implemented instead, but they won't because it's not about keeping the kids away (and never was).
And your example with Instagram is great because they've been caught running experiments actively harming children.
The additional context here is that Google acquired them to get back Noam Shazeer and took some other members of their technical staff.
So the current company is pretty much shambling along after having served its purpose to all stakeholders, and Google probably doesn't really care more than avoiding any sort of liability.
In any case, there is a general problem on the internet regarding how to allow people to remain reasonably anonymous while keeping children out of certain services.
Although it'd still be lame if it's so easy to break that someone can share the key, and then the kids don't need to learn anything.