I'm sorry but you're using that term wrong. You mean a de jure porn ban.

A de facto porn ban would mean that you actually couldn't get any. And that's just ridiculous.

Like drugs are illegal de jure, but de facto getting weed pretty much anywhere in the world is not a challenge. Usually even easier than getting alcohol as an underage person. Not that I have experience of that in the past few decades (being underage that is).

I mean I guess it's "de facto" in sofar that it's not exactly presciptively de jure illegal when it's done like that. So in that sense you are right to use it like that, but eh. I disagree with who I was when I started writing this. No matter we're on lemmy.

Maybe for them. But for governments in general the point is that age verification is ID verification and it means everything you do online or on any electronic device can be surveilled and tied to your real identity. And that makes political dissent a lot harder to organize without being shut down.