It's not "the world is just a terrible place", but rather "the world inevitably has things that kids cannot handle". If you want digital entertainment for your kids, then seek out products which explicitly offer this. The unfettered Internet is a less appropriate babysitter than a red light district.
And talking about "age verification" as if it's some straightforward addition is an utterly dishonest framing. The core idea of the distributed Internet is the barest of communication which further complexity/policy can be layered on top of. "Age verification" actually implies the much more draconian and chilling meatspace identity verification.
Nobody has a problem with a DigitalKidsPlayLand which performs identity verification, strictly curates/moderates content, and escrows all activity for later review. It's this push to legally require such things for everyone, based on some idea that everything needs to be made kid-safe, that is horribly authoritarian and needs to be soundly rejected.
And talking about "age verification" as if it's some straightforward addition is an utterly dishonest framing. The core idea of the distributed Internet is the barest of communication which further complexity/policy can be layered on top of. "Age verification" actually implies the much more draconian and chilling meatspace identity verification.
Nobody has a problem with a DigitalKidsPlayLand which performs identity verification, strictly curates/moderates content, and escrows all activity for later review. It's this push to legally require such things for everyone, based on some idea that everything needs to be made kid-safe, that is horribly authoritarian and needs to be soundly rejected.