> how the age verification debate has popped up almost simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU

It's because of a mix of Barroness Kidron's lobbying [0] and companies trying to meet legislators halfway [1] due to latent legislative anger due to disinformation incidents that arose during the 2016 election, January 6th, January 8th in Brazil, the New Caledonia unrest, and a couple others.

Civil and digital libertarianism is not a mainstream view outside of a subset of techies.

Sadly, building and deploy a truly private and OSS authentication service was not on the radar in the early 2010s - that would have staved off the current iteration.

[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/14/british-baroness-on...

[1] - https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025/11/exclusive...