I don’t understand how this is related. As I understand it, many of the websites affected by these laws did chose to blanket-ban those states from accessing them.

This VPN law is a weak attempt to claim that it’s not enough to geo-block people, similar to the UK governing bodies that are trying to go after websites that have geoblocked the UK because they don’t believe that’s sufficient.

From what I have heard, only porn and smaller sites did this. I am referring to facebook, twitter, blue sky, tiktoc and other such large sites. If those sites starts blocking States like Utah, you would see a big outcry and laws changing.