It’s part protest, part practical solution. If I was one of these sites, I wouldn’t want to bother spending money figuring out the best way to verify age when you can just ban everyone from those states and blame the politicians (it is their fault the law exists).

And one good thing it has done is drive at least some of those people to VPNs, which has to make spying on what people are doing a lot more difficult for ISPs and the government.