“Privacy preserving age verification” is bullsh*t

Many governments are now pushing age verification and VPN restriction laws, lobbied by Big Tech companies, with no visible popular demand for it.

Is that truly to "protect children", or is it better explained by desire to control and censor online speech, while appeasing their corporate donors?

Let's discuss the future of the Internet, freedom from censorship, privacy vs. security trade-off, and other related topics.

To kick off the conversation, we will look at Cory Doctorow's essay on age verification and "Online Safety Act" called “Privacy preserving age verification” is bullshit.

<...>politicians all over the world demanded a kind of impossible encryption: encryption that works perfectly when it’s doing something legitimate, like keeping hackers from pushing malware to your pacemaker or stealing your life’s savings or listening in on you through your phone’s microphone, but also they require that this encryption offer no protection to criminals, drug dealers, terrorists, child abusers, and other miscreants.
This really is like water that’s not wet.