> a) Imagine you are 13 years old and actually reading Terms of Services. Just imagine you are under 18.
No need to imagine because I did exactly that (read my other comment). Let's get into this:
> c) It's not mentioning that you will forever be blocked because you misrepresented your age for whatever the reason (just an unaware click is enough).
It is mentioning SPECIFICALLY that. And an unaware click is not enough, you have to go through the trouble of reading the contract (or scrolling past it), checking a lot of boxes, saying you agree to the contract, and that's only after you in your own will and power decided to search for this. You also get to change your birthday once in your Google account if you made any mistakes during singup.
> If Google was actually serious in enforcing the policy, they would just check any detail that could trigger this user could be below 18 years of age. As you read here, they don't spend much of an effort to avoid this scenario. AI works just to block you, not to avoid your downfall.
Then people will complain that they require documentation, privacy this, privacy that. Mind you that I would never submit an ID to Google to verify my identity, but honestly that's the only way they can actually verify your age.
I'm not a fan of Google and it's autobanning processes with no recourse, but this is a special case where I think it's completely justified looking from their side and all the liabilities they have if they decide to backtrack on something like this.
For them someone is going to criticize them either way they take, so they choose the easier and simpler path of permabanning.