If it is possible to "pretend that they want something reasonable", it means that there is something reasonable somewhere.

Maybe some want more control, but most certainly not everybody.

> so that pervasive monitoring

If you haven't gotten the memo, pervasive monitoring already exists. To sell ads.

> or permission and/or deanonymization is normalized

For age verification, it's possible to do it in a privacy-preserving manner. Now people spend their time complaining about the idea and claiming that all who disagree are extremists, so it doesn't help. But we could instead try to push for privacy-preserving age verification.