Like this, I remember hearing about Ofcom trying to enforce age verification on American owned and operated websites in which was met with resistance as British legislation has no jurisdiction on US soil (there is even an actual court case about it in the US) since it contradicts freedom of expression towards American citizens. It makes me wonder why try to enforce someone else’s laws on another nation, it won’t work as laws are geographically bound.
Social Media companies are NOT headquartered on where age checks have became a thing (UK or AU), like how X (Twitter) or Facebook have their HQ in California which should render AU’s -16 SM “Ban” useless as those laws carry zero jurisdiction in the US. It doesn’t matter if they tried to fine them 50m AUD (they have more in USD and remains stronger than AUD), the thing is FB, Instagram or X are US based firms (so AU legislation has no jurisdiction).
You can be the CEO of any SM company & retort “YOUR LAWS MEAN NOTHING, AS I DO NOT LIVE IN YOUR COUNTRY!” simply refuse to comply as you are aware they cannot enforce laws from one country to someone elses since legislation is geographically bound. It happened with the “Hub” as they stood their ground refusing to comply, what happened? They simply stopped supporting those regions (as in the website no longer works there).
The purpose of age verification is to further deanonymize internet activity, i.e. increase surveillance. As rich Western countries experience contractions and discipline labor, they react with oppression and war rather than improving conditions. This is an escalation in preparation for oppression.
There is also a secondary aspect at the heart of seemingly most national-focused tech legislation and that is to favor whatever monopolies are dominant. For example, if there are national monopolies that are getting drowned out by international ones, but that can still successfully lobby the national government, they can try to get policy that makes it easier for them to gain market share and harder for international monopolies. Or, in the other direction in terms of scale, basically every hurdle to implementation is a barrier that is much more costly to an individual or small company but easily absorbed by a big monopoly. Force most websites to implement AV and you’ve just added a flat base cost that makes small companies less competitive.