Your own link talks about the many downsides, not least of which entrenching the idea that website owners regularly demand government id from their users. No possible downsides to that...

There are always tradeoffs. There is no law that says website owners cannot demand ID already. We might have different belief systems and perspectives on the topic of safety and privacy as it relates to non adults and Internet accessibility, in which case we won't find middle ground. It happens. Democracy is messy. I encourage engagement regardless of your position on the topic. That is how we find (or at least attempt to) the least worst policy.

There is at least GDPR, if you have users of European citizenship, that requires a legal basis to do so if it is mandatory in your registration process

There is no law that says they have to, thankfully.

> There is no law that says they have to, thankfully.

Eight states as of this comment have legislation that has passed requiring age verification. Ten other states have introduced legislation that has not yet passed.

> In 2022, Louisiana passed a law requiring the use of age verification on websites that contain a “substantial portion” (33.33%) of adult content. Websites must utilize commercial age verification systems that check a user’s government identification or “public or private transactional data” to confirm that a user is at least 18 years old. Louisiana’s law has sparked a flurry of copycat legislation to be introduced in state houses around the country.

https://action.freespeechcoalition.com/age-verification-bill...

That's a facile handwaving of some pretty large ones.

It's not "the world is just a terrible place", but rather "things that kids cannot handle inherently exist in the world". The unfettered Internet is a less appropriate babysitter than a red light district.

And talking about "age verification" as if it's some straightforward thing is an utterly dishonest framing. The core idea of the distributed Internet is simple communication which further complexity/policy can be layered on top of. If you want digital entertainment for your kids, then seek out products which are explicitly offering that.

Nobody has a problem with a DigitalKidsPlayLand which performs age verification (to prevent adults from participating), strictly curates/moderates content, and escrows all activity for later review. It's this push to legally require such things for everyone that is horribly authoritarian and needs to be soundly rejected.