Age verification advocates in government warned they would be severely punishing any “platforms” that hinted using VPNs to circumvent age verification controls.

They did not understand that third party publications would begin aggregating “Which”-style lists of “top 10 age verification circumvention-hassle tools”, advertising those lists everywhere as a resource/for clicks.

So what are they going to do now? Ban people from talking about how to circumvent age verification? Drive the teenagers and everyone else even further underground, in pursuit of “perfection” rather than “good” – compare this from 2019:

“The Secretary of State should not make the perfect the enemy of the good when it comes to child protection, especially after so many assurances have been given by the Government that once the privacy issues have been dealt with, and they now have been, these regulations would be brought into law. For the Government to renege on its commitments in this important area is a very retrograde step, and I urge my Honourable Friend and the Secretary of State to think again.”

The government should be content with good and should let the dust settle