

100%.
They don’t give a crap that only large corps can ‘absorb the cost’ of checking age and/or ID, they just want to control/limit what we say and to whom, and what we can do online. And if that requires to kill small non-corporate-owned web (and make everything subscription-based, in the process), so be it.
When they’re not being dishonest, they’re incompetent and proud of it. The few that are not incompetent (and that are honest) they are not numerous enough to make a difference, which is sad. And not just in the UK. I mean, here in France it’s quite interesting too, we’re following steps to the UK, btw, and, what not a surprise, VPN usage has skyrocketed the second they introduced their own version of that stupid age-verification.
Next step seems obvious: make VPN use illegal for the average user (I mean people like us not, say, journalists, NGOs, lawyers and, obviously, politicians—and their families).


maybe those newbies would not have a single ‘linux’ to look at at if that was not for that fragmentation that seem to be so much of an issue…
The people working for free to make Linux what it is are doing it on the simple idea they have been promised: their freedom (and right) to make Linux what they want Linux to be. Not to make it what some group of users or some manager want them to make it.
It’s many flavours, like you called it, is in the Linux DNA like freedom is ;)
Edit: rephrasing (it’s early around here, not slept much ;)