If it's the latter, how is age verification supposed to help here exactly?
Since you are asking me to give away my privacy under this promise, I'm interested in the details.
I am aware that uneducated children will become everyone's problem sooner or later, but my argument is that, at the end of the day, in practice, like it or not, this is mostly in control of the parents. The root cause is that parents fail to provide education, modals, and preparation for being a balanced and responsible person that can control its own impulses, and now these same parents want to externalize their responsibilities to malicious Governments, at the expense of everyone's rights.
Giving away privacy for just patching one of the symptoms is a ridiculous ask, especially in this political environment, and especially when it could be tackled in different ways that don't imply losing privacy.
In my opinion, people will be unfit and uneducated in the future no matter what we do, and they will choose malicious leaders, and having privacy in that future will be better than not having it.
These other people’s children will be your own children’s bullies tomorrow and narcissistic bosses and politicians or similar gang members the day after.
Fact is, we need to find solutions against child abuse in any shape or form that work given the circumstances and decision making of other people around us. We do not exist in isolation. I don’t think age verification in any way contributes positively to this problem space, and I don’t even think online grooming is near any top spot on the list of child abuse vectors that need addressing, but that doesn’t mean that the problem and our contribution to it (like looking away and doing nothing) should be denied as a whole.
Your child, your responsibility, prepare him better for the world or throw the god damn phone to the trash, but please leave me alone.
I had more sympathy for parents with this problem before, but not anymore. If they don't respect my rights, I don't see why I should care about them.