Updated this topic.
Added EU chat control, Youtube petition
(and yesterday the X/Twitter statement bc I would have definitly forgot that)
In terms of EU version of the law. Changes of this Act also includes age verification tools to be implemented. So very similar situation could happen EU wide that the UK now has, seeing that it has almost complete support.
For any EU citizen interested:
Votes took place on June 17, 2025 among MEPs.
599 MEPs are For the bill, 2 MEPs are against, 62 Abstentions
-https://howtheyvote.eu/votes/177025
Information on the EU age verification. Even here they say it could expand on to “other use-cases”, such as alcohol, and member states can decide on this when customising at a national or later stage.
- Could partly threaten VPNs since website restrictions would be in place for every European country you select as an exit point that adopts these rules.
- UK has already exposed using this kind of law to censor a lot more, and already known to go after people based on what they write online or target specific protests.
- Will make organising new protests more difficult if people are too afraid to discuss it to organise one. This can be bad for journalists among others who need to be able to get around without being identified as well as freedom of expression.
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All of this creates a problem that many have touched on: the handing over of personal identification data to various organisations.
That’s a problem, because data breaches are essentially commonplace now, as @Canoe noted.
Give it a bit of time, and I’m sure the solution will be the next thing coming down the line: Mandatory digital IDs.
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i really wish more ppl would see this… I think most people dont even realize what is coming, and if they do it might be too late
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I can at certain sense understand the idea behind these restrictions and how this has been sold to representatives.
Reason is (at least to my understanding) that criminals use Internet for their shady things. However, these restrictions are not answer to this, because criminals mostly use Tor network and darkweb for their business. So even though it could, and I’m highly doubtful about this, prevent some of them, it would only be a minuscule amount of crimes.
Although I’m genuinely worried about things kids see on the Net, I think this is not a solution to it.
I believe this topic is important enough to warrant a bilingual response. This is my opinion:
The general trend in recent years has been to place 99.9% of the population under general suspicion because of 0.1% of criminals and to want to monitor EVERYONE for that reason.
The methods are wrong; they aren’t even effective. The reasons behind this are misinformed politicians, greed for power, misguided lobbyism, and economic interests.
All of this comes at the expense of the 99.9% of the normal population, who are led to believe they are being “protected” by the government. The exact opposite is the case. Wake up, finally.
Btw, “Let them monitor me, I have nothing to hide” is not a solution!
German:
Der allgemeine Trend der letzten Jahre geht dahin, wegen 0,1% Straftätern 99,9% der Bevölkerung unter Generalverdacht zu stellen und ALLE deswegen überwachen zu wollen.
Die Methoden sind die falschen, sie sind nicht einmal zielführend. Hintergründe sind falsch informierte Politiker, Gier nach Macht, fehlgeleiteter Lobbyismus und wirtschaftliche Interessen.
All das geht zu Lasten der 99,9% normalen Bevölkerung, die glauben gemacht wird, sie werde von der Regierung “beschützt”. Exakt das Gegenteil ist der Fall. Wacht endlich auf.
Übrigens: “Sollen sie mich doch überwachen, ich habe nichts zu verbergen” ist keine Lösung!
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“Oh yeah, Spotify, my favorite place to do crime and watch adult content”
No. It’s not about criminals or children, not really. This is about controlling the masses and gaining as much information about people as possible. Total surveillance if you like. And of course, you are not allowed to see things the government deems “dangerous”. Question is, is the information dangerous for you? Or is it dangerous for the government?
Why are you so aggressive? Not every government representative is for total control. My point was that there are people who lobby these things (who want control) to representatives who, in general, are oblivious about exact things these lobbyists are after. These ideas are sold as “protective” measures. Which they of course are not.
Edit. And I agree with you. I simply tried to tell my assumption how these things are “sold” to people who know nothing about Internet in general.
Where was I aggressive?
Anyway I just commented on your answer bc to me your comment came off to me as sort of denial, and saying it’s not as bad, because it’s more with good intentions but badly executed. Which is why I replied that it should be obvious that it’s just not, basically.
And yes there are a handful politicians who have good intentions..
But as you see, not many. And I really don’t think politicians don’t know what they are voting for. I think they very well know what they do, or are manipulated to think they do.
Anyway, what I really don’t need and also don’t want to see here is bad blood. I made this topic to make people aware of this. So that people can communicate here about current situation, and maybe even find solutions. Not to fight, because that ain’t helpful.
Maybe you just interpreted my answer wrong, are or we’re in bad mood and read it wrong. Bad mood is understandable in this situation so I get you…
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Sorry, I’m really bad at reading emotion from English, so this was my over interpretation. 
And this is something that we have been discussing with my wife so it’s something that’s on my mind apparently more than I comprehend. 
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Now with all this, how will you go on? What will you do if this will become worldwide reality? (i hope we can save this sinking ship)
Well you know what they say about bread and circuses.
Take them away, and you have a lot of extremely angry people on your hands, with nowhere to direct that anger but towards the ones responsible. I would be one of those extremely angry people.
These laws aren’t being put in place to protect children, protecting children is somehow always the excuse used for implementing draconian law that protects no one but the government, and it protects the government from it’s people.
This isn’t happening to protect children, this is happening to silence adults, cow us into submission, force us to obey and enforce thought and speech crimes, they want to control what we are allowed to think, and they already control what we are allowed to say.
Free speech is dead worldwide, it has been for a long time now, it’s just been killed in a more subtle way with shenanigans like cancel culture and people straight up losing their jobs for having political opinions that run contrary to 'the narrative’.
Back when I started using it, the internet was a place where nerds came to just be themselves, completely unfiltered, uncensored, saying whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted and nobody would bat an eye.
Then the rest of the world started using the internet more, the normies and the politicians, they saw us, and they hated what they saw, and this is just the next in a long line of steps they’ve been taking to destroy what used to be the greatest safe haven for free speech that has ever existed.
Some parts of the internet are still like this, but those are some very small parts.
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All good, don’t worry
This 
I think the same way pretty much.
Combining cancel culture with the apparent ‘end of the reign of nerds on the internet’ speaks to a very specific perspective.
One thats rather modern.
I gotta tell you .. the internet was a different place before ‘normies’ showed up.
But that shift was a good 20 years or so before those same normies geared up for the current era of culture wars and started trading in terms like ‘cancel culture’.
People act like playing Call of Duty in 2015 was some sort of underground phenomenon. 
We kind of already have that now, National Insurance numbers, or whatever they’re called elsewhere. The amount of information tied into that alone, from bank details, which then surface location, income, address, transactions - which also provide further information on geolocation, I don’t think people realise how deeply tracked everyone is already. We’re already deep into the dystopian rabbithole where every journey made, every road travelled, you’re logged, recorded, and traced.
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^^^
sad thread, I’ve read it twice but the issue at hand (age verification) is small potatoes. And will do far more harm than good. But stick a fork it–we lost the privacy war over 20 years ago. It’s lost the minute you buy a smartphone or let Alexa in your house. Etc.
What would be the Solution? I don’t mind hearing other sides to this. For me it’s still worth raising awareness and fight to prevent it getting worse, I would rather fight and fail as well try to bypass what I can than just let it happen. A big issue with things being as bad as they are already is people are not informed enough and let it happen. Maybe it is a fools errand in the end to fight it but I don’t want to think back on the past if I have to explain to my children or younger generations and feel like I believed the lies and let it happen.
Issue for me is 20 years ago I was 8 years old so all this was already beyond my knowledge and capability for a long time anyway and I have to learn decades worth of stuff on what happened. Likely too late to reverse what has happened but I would rather it doesn’t get worse than it already is despite the many ways we can be tracked already such as through national insurance ID as well as others online. Even countries with very high level censorship rely on our countries for access to freedom of information so we can prevent getting to those levels of censorship.
I have tried to discuss these issues with people in real life of all ages and not able get many to understand completely but bit by bit I start to realise how we ended up where we are, long before I was old enough to do anything.
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what’s the solution?
there is no solution.
there’s just minimizing your profile and footprints. opting out of things. doing without things so many are addicted to. lowering profile and having no social media. there’s all sorts of things you can do for privacy.
But for censorship? What can we do? We don’t make the rules. Don’t believe 90% of the info you receive from popular sources. that would be a start.
edit: I completely respect your idealism. I need some more of that
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I must be doing okay so far then.
Never made a social media account in my life. Never got a phone until I was 21 and even then only because I was being made redundant and job applications forced mobile numbers to call backs by this point, only use it for texts essentially.
I use fake names, fake details on all accounts over the years that changes. Careful browser management and account management, VPN among others. And I am very skeptical of sources I read.
You do make good point on censorship, we don’t write the laws. But unlike heavily censored countries we have some power to leverage, especially in the past compared to now, but it comes with numbers and the numbers issue is what we have, difficult to convince a lot of people to fight it.
But I understand where you come from as what I wrote in the paragraph above is essentially that those who know about this stuff cannot do anything to change things since we are the minority without the numbers to back us up. The reality is likely as you say but I try to fight so I don’t have to tell others I let it happen, like I have had some admit to me that I have spoken to.
It’s good to have these discussions though, the openness is important, if I’m ever wrong I would rather be wrong, called out, and corrected than live a lie (No one is necessarily wrong in this thread by the way, just different views), everyone learns more that way including me.
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Someone think of the children!! ANYTHING to save the children!!
The world is doomed. Hardware is compromised (pluton) now, so you can’t even just say, I’ll use some other browser. It’s a very sad day in human history where every yesterday is better than every tomorrow. Welcome to the present. We all allowed it to happen unfortunatey.
The only way to truly move forward will be to move back. So, a timemachine or something far more doom and gloom.
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