There's two strong incentives - deanonymization for law enforcement is pretty useful so that's one. You want to make it easier to subpoena information about posters for various reasons, access to stores on different dates etc. Lots of reasons for that.
And you want to satisfy voters who are worried about children online or have heard scary things about anonymous criminals. You want to be seen to do something about those.
A distant third is that you want the system to be cheap and built up fast and relatively easy so voters don't complain about it.
All together this leads you to something like "any time a site needs to verify your age (based on this broad list of requirements) put in your government ID number / picture". The infrastructure already exists for that, banks need it, social media needs it, and the current president has agitated for it a few times now. If you're really aiming high you set up some digital ID attached to it that's easier for the users.
>There's two strong incentives - deanonymization for law enforcement is pretty useful so that's one.
When you say it like that it sounds less scary than "deanoymization so the government can track down people saying things it doesn't like." Let's not forget the UK has more people in jail for things they said on the internet than Russia and China put together.
And you want to satisfy voters who are worried about children online or have heard scary things about anonymous criminals. You want to be seen to do something about those.
A distant third is that you want the system to be cheap and built up fast and relatively easy so voters don't complain about it.
All together this leads you to something like "any time a site needs to verify your age (based on this broad list of requirements) put in your government ID number / picture". The infrastructure already exists for that, banks need it, social media needs it, and the current president has agitated for it a few times now. If you're really aiming high you set up some digital ID attached to it that's easier for the users.