There’s much speculation re: the plans, and some quite sane commentary (e.g. below) but since Vinted and EBay both have strongly enforced 18+ age requirements, the risk of “grooming” is negligible.

I propose that instead there are five forces at work, in approximate order of :

1. Age Verification Vendors wanting to grow their potential revenue bases, with the connivance of all of
   1. Treasury (who want taxes and obligatory KYC)
   2. Home Office (who want surveillance) and
   3. DCMS/DSIT/whatever (who want a British Tech Industry)
2. Age Verification Activist-completists, who see this as a tickbox compliance “win” for their grand scheme
3. Boomer & GenX “post-Mumsnet” activists who remember teenage boys flipping through 1970s/1980s mail-order catalogues, for lack of any other kind of porn

Some folk are saying “isn’t it strange that they want to age-verify Vinted but not (yet) Discord” — which is true, it is strange, but I suspect that they are attempting to keep their powder dry for the general war on Signal, WhatsApp, and Allied Chat Tools.