1. Because it isn't what you are saying it is.
You are suggesting it's simply a matter of adults verifying their ages to access adult content. But it isn't! We're being asked to either scan our faces or provide our government IDs, to access basic online interactivity we already have, on the likes of Discord and Playstation Network, in an effort that is rolling out slowly worldwide. No need for porn or sex at all. These things aren't even required by governments yet. Companies are so eager, they're jumping ahead of schedule.
But would I scan my face to be able to watch porn? Of course not, that's insane. This isn't real life where someone can take a look and go "sure he looks 18" and do no real verification at all. This is the Internet. I'm not going to send a live stream of my face to some company, and by the way we have some real true five star companies stepping up to the plate to provide verification services, and have it literally be associated with my intention to download porn. Firstly, why would I want the site operators to even have any more information about me than necessary? Aren't sex stores awkward enough as it is? Secondly, it's the Internet, as soon as that information leaves my computer "encrypted in transit" I may as well treat it as potentially compromised already.
(Though just to be clear, real life is getting spookier too. With Flock cameras popping up everywhere, we can celebrate the death of privacy IRL while we celebrate it online, too! I am aware that certain countries killed privacy much earlier than others, no need to point it out.)
The long and short of it is that people will (and largely already have) just stop browsing porn sites when invasive "age" (often actually government ID) verification is required, which I reckon is the primary intent here. It seems to dovetail nicely with the other obvious PR campaigns against adult content, porn and sex work in the past decade. They've worked quite hard to try to make people forget "the internet is for porn" era.
What's crazier is there was Less age verification than what is being proposed right now back when people phoned in to order a VHS using your credit card. Remember when credit cards were a godsend for the adult industry? The funny thing is that now, you're lucky if you can use your credit card at all for porn, thanks to the anti porn movement that happens to coalesce suspiciously closely to this movement. And in some cases, it seems that merely providing a credit card is no longer seen as sufficient evidence of adulthood. True, you could just steal your parent's credit card... Just like you could 30 years ago. Or just like how you can get a fake ID. Does that mean we should treat everyone trying to buy adult content as if they may have stolen their parents credit card by default?
2. Because I am an adult.
Most of us are. Almost 80% of us are over the age of 18, at least going by U.S. demographics.
And, we're under 18 for less than around 22% of our lives.
The Internet is not some international daycare program. It is an interconnected network of computers. The connections are managed by adults. It's true that there's always workarounds like free Wi-Fi hotspots, but by and large to be online is to be connected to an Internet plan managed by an adult. That means we already should be able to prevent children from having unfettered access to harmful content with basically no modifications to how the internet itself works.
We've had the ability to do this for almost as long as the Internet existed, and Windows 2000 shipped with a fairly comprehensive system using PICS rules from third parties like RSACi. This system didn't require adults to monitor everything their children did 24/7, and it didn't require adults to constantly scan their face or provide their government ID to sketchy third parties to access chat functionality.
Nobody used it of course, because parents didn't actually give a shit in that era. I'd know, I grew up and had plenty of access to adult content long before turning 18. I am not suggesting this is necessarily ideal, but it also isn't this weird cataclysmic issue that it suddenly became literally like a year ago or so. The internet has worked this way since its inception and somehow only just now is everyone in a panicked frenzy. Now I hate to be dismissive, but that's a load of USDA Grade-A Horse Shit.
So I am wholly against kneecapping the concept of unfettered private communication on the internet because we can't get the parents of 20% of people to do their job for the first 20% of said people's lives.
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This whole thing stinks rank to me. I get that big tech companies and social media platforms have not given parents very good tools to manage what their kids can see and do on the Internet, but everyone acts as if this is just Machiavellian evil as they twirl their mustaches and laugh. Don't get me wrong, I fully believe that they knowingly make money off of providing inappropriate content to children. The only problem is that a lot of those children's parents knew that too and simply didn't care. And now, instead of just finally making parental control work, something we've certainly had the technology to do since the 90s, we're going to institute mandatory ID laws for all unfettered communication. Hurray. Blast confetti in the street for this victory against evil.
But to me I look at this "activism" and debate in favor of online ID laws and all I can see are anti-abortion protestors at my local clinic.
(I wrote this as if I am an avid porn consumer, because writing it any other way felt cowardly. But that said, I am not. My true passion is Internet privacy, and if I have to go to bat for Internet porn to help that cause it is no problem for me.)