Yep, they get funding from companies like meta and their insiders

Exactly. More laws about internet services = less new competitors coming into the market, because the barriers to entry are too high.

Well, if the concern is they might miss out on revenue from a small child accessing their site and they are not a child specific site then perhaps they should be pushed out of the market one way or another.

No, what I mean is that adding a lot of laws to let websites be legal (age verification, GDPR, etc.) adds a huge burden and that prevents new small websites from even existing.

All I am proposing is that websites that may contain adult material add a header. That's hobby level effort. Small companies using a CDN or platform provider can either add the header in the CDN, check a box if this were to take off or open a ticket asking to add the header.

I’m not in the US but assuming everyone who disagrees with you is receiving kickbacks is a bit much. I agree this is a terrible idea and doesn’t make sense past a few seconds of thinking but the reality is it’s very popular with an awful lot of people.