Restrictions under consultation include curfews for young users and wider restrictions on children’s access to online services, with implications across internet services from video games, VPNs to even static websites.
Age assurance mandates risk cementing the dominance of gatekeeper app stores, operating systems, and platforms’ walled gardens.
That is exactly how they want it to work.
They don't give a flying shit about children. Otherwise they would arrest the literal thousands of known, active child predators. Hell, one of the most powerful people in the country is a confirmed child abuser and child rapist and they gave him a ton of money and he is walking around free.
This is just a surveillance framework for a fascist future they want. They arrest protestors against a genocide of a fascist regime and support pedophile child abusers. They are literally just having trials for people arrested protesting where the defense is not allowed to give any evidence and the jury is not allowed to know that the judge is secretly gluing on a "terrorism" charge after the jury comes to a conclusion and has to decide guilty with no available defense evidence and the all but direct instructions from the judge to convict.
Just like how they made not being fascist "terrorism" in America. It is all a ploy to set up AI surveillance to actually make fascism succeed this time and not be limited in control by manpower like before.
This article from the EFF specific towards the UK, but I do agree with your overall post that governments are overreaching in harmful ways.
Most of their comment was about the UK!
all of it is about the UK except for a very short comparison at the end....