[gruez]

>and information resellers want as much information about us all as they can get.

That seems implausible given that most sites requiring age verification outsource it to some third party, which means they're not getting all the juicy biometrics.

[runako]

You've identified the group that would be incentivized to lobby for this architecture.

[gruez]

That's an unhelpful way of analyzing stuff because you can cynically retort "You've identified the group that would be incentivized to lobby for this" regardless of what happens. No age verification whatsoever? I bet social media companies would like that! Age verification by the government? I bet it's because the government wants to know what porn sites you visit! Maybe verification by the OS instead? Must be the Google/Android OS duopoly! So complicated PKI or zero knowledge proofs solution? There's probably some consultancy that would benefit, not to mention there's still going to be companies that would handle the outsourcing. There's a whole industry for handling user account management/SSO, for instance, and that's entirely open source.

[runako]

I didn't look at it that way, but there is unfortunately a bit of truth in that analysis. Such is life in a captured state.

Honestly, I wasn't being quite that cynical. Just pointing out that there are actors who have business interests in applying a worse architecture.

But IIRC this was made manifest in Alabama, where a tech company lobbied for their age law and then captured the sole source contract for doing the verification.