That sounds likely to increase their costs and create new opportunities to get caught. Not a silver bullet but not "absolutely nothing". Like how anti-money laundering laws don't wipe out all crime, but are still worthwhile.

If the API costs are gonna be thousands, or the subscription will be $20/month, is it really that expensive to pay some guy on Discord a $50 gift card to verify the account as a one-time setup? Better yet, we'll probably start seeing fake porn websites and other phishing sites that ask to verify your age but end up proxy verifying a bunch of these services in an automated manner with minimal costs, and you'll be able to buy verified Claude accounts for tens of cents on account marketplaces. Just as you have been able to buy verified Discord accounts, aged Steam accounts, etc...

I am a Chinese, and I can tell you definitively that it doesn't cost $50. It will only cost about $7 on the Chinese platform "Xianyu".

Get caught how? They don’t tell the person what they’re going to use the accounts for or who will use it. The star buyer patsy knows nothing.

On the scale of intelligence budgets this would be in the realm of petty cash.

They won't even need to do that. With enough time and money, they can certainly figure out how to not trigger the ID verification system.

Also, as many teenagers know, it's trivial to get a fake ID card.