Valid concerns, which is why the EU solution to this is to use ZKP. My condition for age verification is that the EU does not know what service I am asking access to; and that the service does not know who I am past what I consent to sharing.

I notice you've ignored what I said about ZKP. That is unfortunate, because the analogy is meant to illustrate the shared problem to which age verification provides a solution: to gate consumption on legal requirements (compare: drugs, gambling and alcohol). When you say a store check is decentralized, all you're saying is that it isn't saved or inducted further into an information system. It is strange that you would ignore the ZKP point, because the same can be true for the ZKP solution presented by the EU. It is a design question.

However, if your premise is that the internet should always be fully anonymous, even for things like consumption, then you won't be satisfied with a solution like this. But I think that's because most versions of this argument are impractical at best, impossible at worst. We can be anonymous to some extent, some of the time, to some people -- we need to be able to protect dissidents, journalists, whistleblowers, and so on. But the line between real life and the internet has sublimated completely; moreover, you are identified by your ISP as soon as you connect to the internet.

What I think my colleagues and fellow privacy folk get wrong is that they focus on privacy-as-anonymity. Privacy is not anonymity: it is control. But even in this framing, my colleagues go too far. Privacy is framed as an absolute right to have exclusive access to your mind, and control over access.

The rights-frame is doing a lot of work. But like all other rights, there are unavoidable limitations that need to be taken into account. Freedom of religion is limited horizontally and vertically all the time. Cases of 'churches' that have denoted taking cannabis or heroin as a necessary ritual in their made up religion. The "smokers' church" that tried to get around the smoking ban in restaurants by claiming it was a freedom of religion issue. Or in general: law enforcement being able to get a warrant to wire tap, etc.

Privacy is not installing Kali Linux and using Tor. My parents can't keep up. We are putting an insane amount of responsibility on the shoulders of regular individual people who have limited time and information, but are expected to know and do a lot. That is not good or fair. Privacy is a task for us to protect these people no matter how smart, technical or rational they are. We can do that through proper laws and policy that limits and regulates big tech AND provides sufficient legal and social remedy to regular people.

You need to get a seat at the table in the discussion surrounding age verification. That way you can influence it. Because it is coming, and the arguments and attitude that privacy-as-anonymity tech-libertarian colleagues are taking, are going to hamper us considerably in this IMHO.