forcing consumers to use microsoft would be anti-competition, so no, not going to happen, at least outside of the usa

This is entirely about blocking political speech. Child safety is an excuse, and a poor one.

This is a hijacking: True — the reader is damaged by restricted access, but it is also true that the author is damaged.

You post something that you intend to be read by the general public. You don't control access; the place where you post it does. After age gating mandates, that place will assume the worst — that your content is adult content.

There are three age tiers: adult, young adult, and infants. After age gating mandates, many of your readers in the general public won't comply by stipulating their ages. The worst-case assumption is that they're all infants.

When age gating breaks down, there's a mismatch between default age rating of authors' content with default age rating of readers. Content that is adult by default won't reach readers who are infants by default. Much of your content will go unread by much of the general public. One assumes this is age gating's intentional design — to restrict access to your content.

Would a vpn immediately solve this? Different hardware id no?