Wouldn't it be strange if solving a problem didn't affect elections?
The governments themselves are "dumber, sadder, and more scared". They are worried because social media puts regular people talking on equal footing to official propagandas (being able to reach everybody else). That's what they fear, because they have the lowest approval ratings and legitimization in over half a century, and they're also making everything shittier and shittier to the benefit of their corporate overlords.
Also, remote attestation doesn't work that way and for good reason. Under a true ZKP system, a single defector (extracted/leaked/etc key) would be able to generate an infinite number of false attestations without detection.
Even more reason to make the "demo" app do things correctly because it's very unlikely that all member states actually implement things correctly.
> The internet is scary, parents think they can’t protect their children from many bad things happening, and someone came to provide a “solution."
A simple solution is just not providing your kids with a phone or computer.
Don't forget that many sources of porn will not obey this. Think the pirate bay will ask for age verification? If they obeyed the law they wouldn't even exist.
It's a solution for nothing, as the article points out too.
The idea that we want a single database or a network without any kind of control is frightening me
Why would you correct data about you very own surveillance ?