The question is -- why they even need to verify ages of users. This is not decided, and my take is that they do not.

It's funny, concomittant all this chest beating about representing open societies, democracies, unlike those creepy evil authoritarian states which we don't like, that the EC seems hell bent on proving we can have a police state _just_ as intrusive if not more than say: Russia. This is not how we were supposed to prove that we are better.