So the government mandating ID checks on the must popular websites makes it harder to monitor people? You're going to have to explain that one to me.

Imagine if you couldn't enter certain public spaces without providing ID, because otherwise unsupervised kids might get in there, then imagine the records of who had been in that places was stored in some random spot online with only loose platitudes that the government expects companies to try really hard not to leak that data. Would you then feel that this was a safe place?

Also because the kids are smarter and more motivated than the government gives them credit, they start using work arounds to access that place, so the main way to get penalised and potentially have your identity stolen is to engage with this pointless and flawed system in good faith.

This is a debacle on an epic scale, they could instead be putting in place some real legal consequences for companies that facilitate or engage in abuse. We know for example that Facebook has experimented on manipulating algorithmic results of teenaged girls to make them better consumers by heightening body image issues. Round up the Australian Meta executive team and throw then in jail for a decade or two when that sort of shit comes out. When a data leak takes place extradite the CEO and give him a day of jail for every user that was put in jeopardy, it'll only take a couple of CEOs sing jailed for multiple centuries before data security becomes a top focus in every company.

No instead let's institute a poorly thought out ban on a non voting block, to disguise the first steps in establishing the framework of the actual surveillance state we are working up to.

It bans only certain people by age. Now how do you figure out their age? Photos, ID both work, but simply asking for age is not considered enough by the government.