It's not about age verification and it never was, that is a distraction at best and a delusion at worst. This is about tying your real name to all of your online activities, and about getting the current generation of children used to it and accepting of it before they reach voting age.
This. The German government issues electronic IDs which can provide proof of age in a privacy-saving way, but I've never seen that being used in the wild.
I would counter that they already have that. Would go so far to say that the government knows pretty much everything you do online by name. What they can't control, it's access. I think the reason for this is for an eventual license to get on the Internet. The same way you need a license to drive a car, you will need a license tied to your real identity, to use the Internet.
