1) Large social media companies know you better than your friends. That has been known for 10 years and they're way better now: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/science/facebook-knows-yo...

2) Cigarette vending machines accept VISA cards and government IDs and they're offline.

3) A medium-sized social media network required photos (not scans) of GovIDs, where only year of birth and validity date need to visible. The rest could be blacked out physically.

4) You can guess users' age and only request solid proof only for those you are unsure about.

The problem is that we technical users think of a one-size-fits-all technical approach that works, without a single fail, for all global users. That is bound to fail.

It is only a law and you can break it big time or small time. Reddit's approach might proof way too weak, it'll be fined and given a year to improve. Others might leave the market. Others will be too strict and struggle to get users. Others might have weak enforcement and keep a low profile forever. Others will start small, below the radar and explode in popularity and then enforcement will have to improve.

You can also request identity and then delete it. (Yes, some will fail to delete and get hacked.)

Giving Facebook a free pass is stupid. They're selling your age cohort "10-11" within 0.0037ms for 0.$0003 to the highest bidder on their ad platform.