The Vatican probably has a box of marble penises somewhere after Pope Pius IX (r. 1846-1878) had them removed from statues and replaced with leaves because it was "obscene"

Now the legislative branches and governments are trying to pretend they have a solution to a very difficult problem.

This is a double edged sword, to say the least.

(IMHO, of course)

We are heading towards a Dystopian Surveillance society with no privacy rights.

... if the London Met Police get their way.

One of the problems the new approach causes is that there are a lot of people, who neither of us would consider criminals, who have gone to great lengths to try and remain safe, and this breaks that for them.

anonymizing money (crypto) = good
anonymizing people (privacy) = bad

huh????

It is. This isn't about pedofiles per se, but that kids are using Meta's services before they're of minimum age (iirc 13...16 depending on location). As Meta's services are repeatedly proven to be bad for mental health by design (as happy people don't spend monies), they can't fix the root cause.

So instead of overhauling their systems to be healthy, they're trying to get everyone to give them their IDs.

It's essentially the same discussion as with tobacco.

but at the same time it is pretty clear that fascism can pop up out of nowhere and then such data could be brutally misused indeed.

They're not asking solely age. Remember that the drive to ask for IDs is led by Meta. They're using this platform partly to divert blame, but also part to increase the accuracy of their profiles. Which everyone has, as Facebook has cookies on vast majority of websites, not just their own.

Second, they're not asking age solely on sites intended for kids, but on places where people would talk of their politics and preferences. Such as, say, gay person in Russia.