Hard agree. I don't think we allowed video store operators in 1995 to just let kids wander into the back room and rent porn, but we're so used to there just being "no rules" online, it is coming as a massive shock now when it's being suggested that maybe there should be some basic guardrails to discourage that.

Let me be clear, I don't want face scans, or more of those creepy companies that operate this age verification crap for Discord, etc. Because I know it's not going to be implemented in the privacy-preserving way it could be, if there's ANY involvement with identity documents. Not least because we don't even have any proper cryptographically useful identity cards, so everything like that operates on a "trust us bro" basis where they pinky promise not to accidentally store everyone's raw face scans / ID cards / numbers / etc and inevitably leak them.

But out-of-box age declaration is not extreme and is not slippery-slope, any more than out-of-box user account creation 25 years ago has led to out-of-box ID card checks.