There's really two cases here.

You live in a democracy?

YES) the violation you describe is verifiable to a journalist. You publish story, and you keep the government accountable.

NO) Why are you even discussing if age verification is a good idea or not, you freak. It's not really up to you anyway. Go fix your country first.

You mean the journalists that are pro age-verification and pro banning everything that's slightly critical and constantly demonize everyone going against them?

Plenty of democracies in Europe and elsewhere regularly and repeatedly fail to actually represent the desires and interests of the citizenry, but they keep getting reelected anyway. Why should this time be any different?

I'm sure they do fail, but at least they have the theoretical ability for citizens to more directly challenge crimes comitted by the government itself. Unlike the U.S., which removed it by statutes, most other common law countries, and all civil law countries, citizens retain the ability to force criminal prosecution (either by private prosecution or by appeal to a magistrate with proof a crime has been committed).

I have no idea what this has to do with the EU implementing age verification because politicians want it, and the powerlessness of EU citizens to arrest or impede the government's machinations. Feels Gish Gallopy.

What I can say that's at least tangentially relevant to the topic at hand is that I've lived for a couple of decades in both the USA and the EU, being a citizen of both, and have found Americans generally much more politically informed and involved. I find Europeans, particularly Irish, very well informed about U.S. politics that they are powerless to influence, and next to oblivious of anything going on at home. Given that Ireland has the EU Presidency right now and is choosing to use its bully pulpit to advocate for British-style draconian Internet regulation, that's doubly a shame.

Do you trust today's democracy to be a democracy tomorrow?

Never. Cede. Ground. You'll never get it back, and one day the rights will be gone.

Age verification in Australia had like 70% popularity.

That is an astounding consensus in a system which regularly decides elections by 51%.

You're not getting mandated from up high: it is democratically enormously popular to do this.

Australia has two major parties that agree on absolutely everything, and a virtually non-existent civil society. No true free debate can take place in such circumstances. The Australian government loves falsely claiming a popular imprimatur for policies that have never been properly debated or put before the people.

The only reason we have any rights left is because the Australian government is - thankfully - comically incompetent.

"Australia is a lucky country" is a quote every Australian knows. Few know the full quote: "Australia is a lucky country, run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise." - Donald Horne.

I encourage all my teenage countrymen to use as many social media apps as they desire. Mullvad is a decent VPN and you can pay for it anonymously. Freedom of speech and freedom of association are your human rights. No government gets to take them away from you.

That's a fallacy. You don't have any evidence to support the claim that this system of age verification is popular and more importantly, whether it would remain popular if people had a full understanding of how it worked and how it can be abused.

It might be popular to have age verification conceptually and only as long as it's only used "as advertised", which is not the same thing.

This is one of the biggest issues of democracy. As long as your propaganda machine is strong enough (and anti-privacy propaganda is one of the strongest) you can pass just about anything and pretend that society put on the shackles of surveillance and coercive control voluntarily.

People just submitted it. I don't know why. They "trust me". Dumb fucks.

No you're switching intent around here: age verification for social media is very popular.

Whether any given implementation is popular is a different question.

But people aren't attacking implementations: they're attacking the concept as though people don't want it.

But in surveys they do: by a huge margin, politically.

It's like how a generic candidate tends to reliably poll higher then a specific person.

"Why does this keep coming up" has the trivial answer of "because people overwhelmingly keep asking for it".

You can complain about the people being decieved if you want, but they still vote regardless.

Or you live in a democracy so you throw a fit until your government backs down. No amount of journalists is going to change the US or the UK at this point.

Didn't work for EU or US surveillance.