People massively overstate the power and influence of the Académie française. It is essentially just a cultural organization. Sure, it claims to officially regulate the French language, but its decisions are not actually binding on anyone, not even the government or the education system, and are in fact widely ignored.

In actual practice, French is about as regulated as English is (i.e., not at all) and French people use tons of loanwords from various languages, especially English and Arabic.

It's been a while since I've talked about this with somebody from France, but if I remember correctly, they take pride in speaking real French rather than speaking pure French. I wish I remember the words they used.

In other words, they recognize the Académie as the authority on purity, and then reject purity.

> its decisions are not actually binding on anyone

IME they are binding on French learners who, instead of being taugh French as she is spoke (haha) are taught French à la Académie Française.