Protecting children is a noble goal that I personally agree with, but it's also often used to sane-wash further erosion of privacy.
As has been discussed here and elsewhere, age verification turns out to be the complete loss of Internet anonymity due to its implementation techniques. There are proposed alternative implementations, very conveniently for some, this is not part of the discussion.
This is exactly the time when nerds like us should speak up.
https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu...
No doubt that it will be good news to gambling advertisers, but the push for age verification was already underway in 2020, well before government recommended an end to gambling advertising (2023).
It's a neat explanation, so an easy sell, but doesn't match the chronology.