Well I wrote the rest a few weeks ago and debated posting it in its current state, but now the very first site was named that'll be complying with upcoming EU age verification (it doesn't even exist yet as of right now) and can you guess what it is? Nexus Mods. Yes that's right that's not a joke, its not a porn site, its not Twitter but a fucking game modding site? Seriously? I'm kinda checked out from most of the modern/mainstream web so I was at least hoping yeah Discord/Twitter/Reddit/YouTube is gonna be the main focus and they'll settle for just censoring most of popular sources of information people use instead of going all out and its like I either don't use these to begin with or they'll be easy enough to bypass or whatever right, but if they're going after Nexus Mods of all places (am I underestimating Nexus' popularity? Surely its not anywhere near comparable to social media) it has to be asked what is safe? Pretty much nothing. Contrary to popular belief it seems like governments are not incompetent or out of touch when it comes to the internet anymore, its not the same like old moral panics anymore where boomers find out about online porn and want to sue the first company whos page they heard of, they do actually know what they're doing and they're hell bent on making sure you don't ever get to see anything they wanna censor no matter which random corner of the internet its in or how niche it is, today its NSFW and any differing political opinions, tomorrow it can be anything and depending on how far they go, if you've already got your own copy, you're a criminal and yes they will prosecute like they do in Germany/UK for any nonallowed political options.

How are you coping with the fact most of the world turned to a totalitarian surveillancestate almost overnight? How are you preparing to go with severely restricted or no internet? Do we have anyone here from China to give some tips on how to get by? I've been downloading stuff for years, but its still far from everything I'd want to keep and even if I achieved that, not being able to get anything new or talk to people sucks. Stop killing games won, thats great but its like the EU too is gonna hold the digital libraries like everything else online hostage unless you dox yourself so does it even matter? Pirating games sucks bad, losing access to Steam, losing that money (not like most money isn't fake nowdays anyways that payment processors and banks can just keep for themselves anytime for any/no reason), its fucked up.

Source: https://www.nexusmods.com/news/15319

Original: Hope its fine to post this here, I assume many people here aren't really interested to begin with in politics and such things, I for sure am not but some things are better not ignored until last minute when they will have major effects on the internet. A lot of things happened recently in like the past 2 months on how much more government enforced censorship and surveillance is coming to the internet around the world in the near future and I find it extremely concerning to say the least.

Normalization of government internet censorship and surveillance with porn bans excuse as a start, there have been a few examples of this recently, in certain US states, the UK, Australia, France and the whole EU. Personally I wouldn't even care if they just tried to sue or shut down or whatever the top porn sites that they always love using in examples, but thats the point, this is just an excuse to normalize total government control of the internet, its not about porn or whatever other excuse they may come up with in the future, Discord for example is already testing harvesting IDs in the UK and Australia, it is just a matter of time before it becomes easier for them to roll it out globally and just make it mandatory for signup not just NSFW channels. This is due to the UKs recent laws that just went into effect like a month ago, many independent sites hosted in the UK that don't even have any NSFW content have shut down simply because they can not risk the high fines they'll get just in case a few bad actors spam their forums for example (I would expect such attacks to increase, why DDOS a site or mass report it to a hosting providers when you can just spam porn on it and then report it to the government for not being complaint and they'll get a multi million pound fine) I've heard some other smaller sites based elsewhere complying with the UK regulation too. Some states in the US already have implemented and others are currently planning to implement outright porn bans, age verification requirements even onto platforms like Twitter/Reddit/Discord (and obviously after they comply they can go after smaller sites) or to expand the definitions so far that even some SFW anime may get you in serious legal trouble. Just today I find out the EU is trying to do this too and is rolling out a digital ID phone app that they want sites to use, so basically the government will see and decide what websites you're allowed on. They're not even doing a good job at hiding this behind the porn excuse when they openly talk about wanting to ban Twitter or TikTok, they'll go after everything if even the biggest sites who will always comply and censor on demand (which they've been doing for years) are not safe despite going along with all their wishes. Pornhub advocates that all phones and PCs should basically have hardware based DRM and enforce like age gating device wide, they promote some no-name organization thats asking for Google/Apple/Microsoft accounts to be ID verified to enforce this on the whole web. Obviously in a future like this old OSes and non-big tech systems would be basically blocked from most of the internet. You may already feel this, like for the past week I've been getting capchad every single time I open a YT video, even with cookies on, even if I change IP (in the past some VPN IPs were banned while most worked fine), if you're not running stock Chrome on Windows with no VPN big sites are already trying to blacklist you. Now the enshittification is law with severe punishments behind it to make sure everyone who hasn't yet complies too.

Some sources: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/30326565624343-How-to-Verify-Age-Group https://nichegamer.com/gop-texas-bill-could-jail-you-for-owning-or-watching-goblin-slayer-and-more/ https://nichegamer.com/republican-senator-introduces-bill-to-define-obscenity-may-pose-risk-to-video-games-and-anime/ https://reason.com/2025/05/12/republicans-want-to-redefine-obscenity/ https://www.pymnts.com/mobile-applications/2025/european-union-launch-age-verification-app-online-use-july/