I was querying that the motivation is control and power abuse more than protecting children. I live in the UK and know people that go into politics. A lot want to protect children. People can be over cynical about assuming everyone is evil.
Don’t be deceived - huge amounts of lobbying went into this, because some savvy entrepreneurs saw a market to sell age-verification services. The key driver behind the laws is more about creating that market than actual child protection - if they were actually interested in that, they wouldn’t be pushing things that are clearly so ineffective (but expensive).
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safer-technology-...