Honestly, I would probably just ban it. You either have a free and open internet, or you have a restricted one. Semi-restricted is the worst of both worlds, in my opinion.

We can all agree there are parts of social media which are bad. Whether that's the number of bots, the algorithms for feeds, the incessant "noise" of it all, or whatever else. And many people will say there are upsides, such as being able to keep in touch with long-distance relatives or socialise with a wider group of people who share a similar interest.

But the more you restrict social media, the harder it is to keep it alive.

Look at Tumblr. In the aftermath of their porn ban many years ago, their active user numbers fell off a cliff. Now every social media site has essentially done the same with their age verification. Not all users will care about their privacy, and scan their face or give a picture of their passport or whatever.

But if you start to impose more restrictions, whether it's outright banning under 18s, or proving you are human with your posts, or whatever else people may want. It just increases the friction for people to interact with the platform, and thus causes people to leave.

And if people start to leave, less gets posted. As less gets posted, there's less need for people to check in to see "what's new". And the less people check, the less people post... you get the point.

You can have rules on your platform. And breaking those rules results in your account being banned. But putting a barrier in place to stop people from potentially breaking the rules (restrictions, verifications, etc.) just makes it a worse experience than it not being there.