This is pretty much it. Bought and paid for, or hand forced by intelligence powers operating beyond ordinary voter politics

Conspiracy theory^

This is happening worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_laws_b...

The fact that it's coordinated in all "Western" countries show it's a real conspiracy, not just a theory.

Oh yes like Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey. If it is happening worldwide, it is less likely to be a coordinated scheme and more likely coming to the same conclusions based on current research.

Oh yes sorry, Western countries and dictatorships.

But sure, all governments suddenly woke up at the exact same time, give or take a few months, and realized that social media should be banned for kids.

I think they all wanted to control internet access since the arab spring, but they didn't have a good wedge. Now the data around harm to children is widely available, they all have the same excuse they can use at the same time.

Or maybe different people respond similarly to the same incentives.

For decades the tech industry (mostly Facebook and Discord) has been saying you just have to let us groom children, there's no way to have this tech and not groom children. Now the predictable consequences of that are arriving: the tech industry is being turned off, because it grooms children.

If your argument is that a group is conspiring to establish policy in a country, the idea that it's happening in many, many countries means the threshold for evidence is now much higher, since the group should be able to have much more control.

This is the logical conclusion but there is currently a mass wave of Meta grunts downvoting.

Apparently if countries all put an age limit on tobacco it must mean there is a secret group coordinating for it for ulterior reasons.

I wonder what happened in the past 3 years which put this on the agenda of all these countries.

8 individuals have as much money, and much more power, than half of the globe's population.

The fact that you think there's no such group is simply insane.

I mean, the very agenda of their upcoming conference was on the front page of HackerNews a few days ago...

It's as much of a "conspiracy theory" as ordinary monetary corruption worldwide: There doesn't need to be any connection or conspiracy between politicians who take bribes, just like there doesn't need to be any connection or conspiracy between politicians who push for more surveillance and control over others.

What you linked is the evidence of the conspiracy, no need to turn it the other way round.