What do you mean it's not unpopular? How many voters have ever expressed interest in this?

If the politicians keep voting for things their constituents don't (and in these cases actively push back against so hard that the politician are forced to withdraw the push) that seems like strong evidence that politicians are doing something with an external incentive...

Politicians having bad incentives (e.g. campaign donations) isn't conspiracy thinking, it's a documented reality. Hell, we even had a supreme court judge taking a present from somebody who's case he was ACTIVELY OVERSEEING.

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jamesbelchamber 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> What do you mean it's not unpopular? How many voters have ever expressed interest in this?

UK: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202...

US: https://issueone.org/press/new-poll-finds-near-universal-pub...

Aus: https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/51000-support-for-un...

So far as I know there's nothing confounding here - people from across the political spectrum just seem to think it's a good idea to introduce age checks and to restrict children from accessing adult content.

	▲	zug_zug 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's a powerpoint of somebody really trying to push an agenda and has nothing to do with age verification. The 88% support is for "social media platforms to protect minors from online harms, such as the promotion of eating disorders, suicide, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation." I'm sure social media could say with 99% accuracy whether somebody is a minor already just based on advertising data and if a law prevented facebook from showing diet pill ads to a kid that has absolutely zero with some sort of government tracking bullshit. The fact that you are citing 3 studies without even reading them apparently really makes me suspicious of your motivation here.