Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stronger: Once you accept their right to ask , then you open the door to their right to a truthful answer, and thus to a verified answer.
Hasn’t the right to ask existed since the invention of consent laws? The state being able demand a persons age, and gate their behaviour based on that, has existed for hundreds of years so far. During that entire time the requirement to be truthful has also existed otherwise the laws would be meaningless. All that’s changing now, is figuring out how that extends into the digital realm. I personally find the argument…
Let me be clear, I don't want face scans, or more of those creepy companies that operate this age verification crap for Discord, etc. Because I know it's not going to be implemented in the privacy-preserving way it could be, if there's ANY involvement with identity documents. Not least because we don't even have any proper cryptographically useful identity cards, so everything like that operates on a "trust us bro" basis where they pinky promise not to accidentally store everyone's raw face scans / ID cards / numbers / etc and inevitably leak them.
But out-of-box age declaration is not extreme and is not slippery-slope, any more than out-of-box user account creation 25 years ago has led to out-of-box ID card checks.