It's essentially because of shitty parents allowing kids unsupervised access to the internet, rather than expecting parents to parent they pushed the cost/risk to companies.
Imgur decided they didn't want to foot the cost/risk and pulled out.
As a brit, I don't blame them, if I was US based I'd geoblock the UK as well.
Not least because it's the only way this will make enough of a stink for the gov to climb down.
>90% of parents allow their kids unsupervised access to the internet. That's reality. We've spent the last 30 years begging them to supervise and it hasn't worked, so proposing to do it again is a nonstarter.
On the other hand, I completely get why. Expecting parents to know how to operate Windows, Mac, ChromeOS, iOS, Android, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, ChatGPT, and school-issued devices is absurd, delusional, obviously never happening. CompTIA A+ Certification, for entry-level help desk work, requires learning about less platforms than what a parent faces. Even then, what about the computers that have minimal filtering at school libraries, or at friend's houses?
Denial of the kids on the internet as a problem, combined with unfair expectations on parents, is how we got here.