In the UK, many sites are now legally required to enforce age verification to prevent kids accessing mature content. To access an adult site now, you must use methods such as facial age estimation or proof of age ID.

While this obviously applies to sites like Pornhub, other platforms such as Reddit and X have also been hit with restrictions:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/30/uk-online-safety-law-leads-to-5m-extra-age-checks-a-day-and-surge-in-vpn-use

Australia, meanwhile, has gone even further, essentially banning social media for under 16s including Youtube:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpv0zkxx0njo

It even extends to Xbox.

https://www.eurogamer.net/xbox-users-will-now-need-to-verify-their-age-in-compliance-with-uks-online-safety-act

Welcome to a nanny state, perhaps the UK idolises the CCP.

It's also enforced on some apps. Saw people on Reddit commenting about dating apps like Grindr enforcing age verification

I'm very much in agreement. Kids and underage teenagers have no bussines accessing some kind of content. The issue for me is how they will handle and manage the data used for age verification

Not for kids, it's for the adults too. I was a bit shocked at this at first but the more I think about it (It's a poor bill in the UK mind, very broad) something needs to be done. You can't have a society where 12 year olds are having political debates with adults and swaying opinions. You can't have full anonymity on the internet indefinitely either, it's fine for now (even though it's causing problems) but if the Internet becomes a place where politics is actively held and all signs point to it being so as well as Governemnt orgs now being mostly online and at some point it'll all be online, you need an ID. Now this rushed implementation is the problem. You should not have to verify your age or personhood on the net and that should be done offline for sure and you should get a special ID for Internet usages away from the internet which has no relation to any of your personal details that is on a universal system and only a trace back to your identity done in a way that if it gets hacked it's meaningless. VPNs negate anything done here.

Well as this, I think Kojimas MGS2 (as whacky as that story is) about too much junk information and everyone falling into circles of varying beliefs, I have studied everything about MGS2 that's even tangentially related and I think this problem is as big of a threat as any other to civilization remaining stable in the long term. There is something I came across years ago called the gossip trap, I won't explain what it is but it has a very strong case for civilization not forming in the 160-200 thousand years humans had the ability to do so and this gossip trap is forming on the internet and if it prevents civilization from forming, large groups of people working for the same goal then it can certainly destroy a civilization. Information on the internet has to be filtered by some means and not driven by algorithms. Not sure how that would be done, it's not a matter of getting people on the same page, the goal would be to get people back into the same book, there'd still be room for different world viewd but not entire communities who believe the world to be flat, the moon is hollow or birds aren't real and their government spies. 

So my opinion is, this is a start. It's a start for the wrong reasons and done incredibly badly. It's also going to cause civil unrest surely and be used for political opponents promising to revert it. It needs to be done with more naunace and thoughtfulness as well respecting people's freedoms.

The Internet is as powerful a threat as nuclear weapons and we should treat it as such and on thst note In the first years following the first nuclear reactor usages companies dumped waste from plants into the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Nobody does that anymore and that's about where we are at with IT at the moment. There are huge problems being cuased and we don't know how to fix them. This law would be those barrels of radioactive waste lining the ocean floor, in the years to come we should get better at bringing about some sense of conformity to peoples world views. It's a nessessity.

More like the UK idolizes Red America. There are similar laws in place in a lot of states in the South, like Texas and Oklahoma. Small government, indeed.

However, I will say that for people who trot out the China boogeyman all the time, evangelicals are acting more and more like China.

Considering the history of the internet and how it has fared so far ... I'm only surprised about the fact that such regulations came in this late really.

Though the bogeyman of child protection is the obvious point waived by these conservatist groups, the real problem obviously comes from the eventual loss of actual privacy for these individuals and the amount of data that will likely not be used for the common good.

Social credit score system. In the US this will be managed by AI Palantir to combat online "antisemantism".

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html

The US is also seemingly flirting with the idea:

https://time.com/7288539/kids-online-safety-act-status-what-to-know/

I'm quite worried about the lack of information about all these events in the major spanish newspapers, barely anyone is talking about this, and those who are are handwaving it. I don't know how it is in the press of other countries, but this ought to be a major story, this is a major move against freedom of speech and pricacy, and if they are pushing it this hard in the UK, there's no doubt they'll try it to do so as well in the EU and USA.

Everyone in the UK knows about it now regardless of the main stream media and that hasn't filtered out, I'm surrounded everyone and their mothers know about this by now, a hell of a lot more than the payment processor over reach. Thus has gone pretty viral and going pretty viral on the internet is so much more powerful than main stream media coverage. Vitality on the internet can and has caused revolutions, mass protests and global riots. MSM has never done anything close to that.  

Charlie (Moist Critical)

Muthahar (Some Ordinary gamers)

Asmongold (The balding goblin)

Philip Defranco (SXE Phil)

All the above have talked about it and so many others with as much reach and the smaller people too are so much more influential these days that MSM. Moist Critical alone has more sway than probably Sky News or The BBC.