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11/Aug/2025
Wikipedia succumbs to Online Safety Act
(You need to upload a personal profile and bank details before you can access wikipedia.com/fart)

Wikipedia had to fight the Online Safety Act, too. The fear is that children will look at "adult" articles. Or that they end up looking at gruesome war articles.

The first thing that come to mind is an attempt to limit information. There's always some nationalistic stuff they never properly teach you about your own country. There's always wars your country was apart off that they lost or was just a brutal slaughter of civillians.

The limiting of "adult" material. I can only assume this is gonna block very basic human anatomy stuff. The kinda stuff a young person might need if their parents don't take certain medical issues seriously.

The Wikimedia Foundation, was seeking examption for a lot of it's information but was denied in court. They have a chance to fight it, but it feels a little slim.

To add a quote;
"The British government says the law is designed to protect children and remove illegal content. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has said those who wanted to overturn it were "on the side of predators"."

6/Aug/2025
A puritanical attempt at purging the web
(Again, once more, the return of, uno mas)

In July of 2025, a group called Collective Shout (Wiki) approached the online marketplaces of Steam and Itch.io about adult games on their service. Collective Shout claims to have written to these stores and payment processors Visa, Paypal and Mastercard and demanded the companies to boycot the markets for allowing adult and extremely-themed games.

As we go along, keep in mind how other platforms like Patreon, Gumroad and OnlyFans also had problems with payment processors not wanting to accept "brand-damaging" transactions in adult spaces. It goes hand in hand with the eradication of NSFW stuff from the internet. Tumblr purge, Pornhub banned off Instagram, IMGUR purge and so on.

Collective Shout claims to not be against LGBTQIA+ expressions and media, but a lot of people on the affected platforms have remarked that SFW that simply featured gay or trans characters were also delisted or removed. Which is either them deflecting the backlash or it states that Visa, Mastercard and Paypal added that.

It should be noted that Melinda Tankard Reist, the founder of Collective shout is also the founder of Woman's Forums Australia. You can search the website for tags in articles and searching "trans" should give you a quick idea of where Melinda's organisation stands.

To quote an article from May 1st, 2025:
"Gender ideology has had a devastating impact on the rights, safety and dignity of women and girls who are being forced to share female-only spaces and sports with biological males."

Collective Shout received backlash when they proudly presented themselves after their boycotting campaign. The blame for the start of the campaign is suddenly thrown to "a random gamer" who approached them with the campaign and Collective Shout just ran with it. That's what they say after the fact.

Steam resisted at first, ignored them even, but quickly started tearing down games and visual novels after they got confronted with the worst of the worst on the marketplace itself.

A reporter from Vice started covering these happenings but had her articles pulled by Vice Operator, Savage Ventures.
(Article 1, Article 2)

Itch.io at first delisted every adult game and there were people reporting SFW LGBTQAI+ content was delisted, too. They slowly started to relist a majority of LGBTQAI+ titles and a few days ago they made it so NSFW you can buy is delisted, but free NSFW content is still available.

They are looking into better payment processors. Some people still claim their games are still delisted or were removed while just being LGBTQAI+ themed SFW works. The Itch.io press person on Bluesky is responding where they can to investigate those claims. Itch.io also released their annual Queer Games Bundle at the start of the month.

Some people find the timing a little suspicious and smokescreeny. I do have to say that this Bundle has been around every year for a while and is between the creators, not the site itself. I would argue that if they left it by the side this year many people would have been furious and lose their last hopes.

In their panic, many stores and other sites may have updated their rules and may have left things a little to vague. SFW Furry stuff and zoo-trash is in the same category in a lot of these as example.

On the Steam side of things, small devs from SFW games that were removed claim to have gotten nothing back from their contact with Steam. I read GoG is doing a giveaway on NSFW titles as a small demonstration. Or just PR for themselves before they go back under the radar.

Currently it's a little quiet. People are calling Mastercard, Visa and PayPal and leaving complaints about not being able to buy anything. Asking why this is the case and debating changing card company to someone who doesn't inject personal morals while also taking a cut of all their transactions.

5/Aug/2025
The next step in KOSA, SOPPA, PIPA, WHATEVA
(Making the web safe by indexing every single person)

There has been a massive uptick in social sites and services demanding age verifications via super intrusive means. Either you give them a perfect scan of your face or you cough over your bank details. Those are the main ways most platforms go with.

Youtube used to ask me for a picture of my face, ID or drivers licence before. In the end I found a plugin to bypass that check and never had to look back since. Youtube is using AI to determine your age though your viewing habits.

So autistic people or super hobbyists might be seen as kids and all little timmy needs to do is search "How to file taxes" 3 times in a row to break the system. Very safe. Could never go wrong.

You may have seen the little articles of people using characters from video games or other forms of proxies to by pass facial scanning. VPN's are making the rounds and I'm very sure you'll see more advertising for them. I even saw some one mention "This person does not exist" since a few years.

A lot of this already started earlier for UK residents in the form of the UK Safety Act. An archaic approach to the online space written by corpses. European countries are also joining in on the ACTS, bills and all that.

All of this is happening under the banner of "think of the children!" which is such an ancient slogan by the Moral Majority even the Simpson's have been joking on it for 30 years.

It's bad enough that plenty of people reported that the system in place also blocks UK users from searching up current events in Gaza or the Ukraine.

I had heard a quick mention that a lot of this leads to 1 person, Peter Tiel, But I can't remark on this for now.