A lot of things have happened since the last post on the Censorship War. Most notable are these:

Roblox getting sued by Louisiana Attorney General

Roblox is used mostly by children, and children under 13 apparently can't chat on it. But kids were lying about their age and bypassing this restriction to get access to chat anyway, got groomed by child predators and some were kidnapped, some sent explicit videos of themselves for Robux - an in-game Roblox currency - and so on and so forth.

This problem has existed on Roblox for at least 3-5 years, and nothing was done about it: reports were being ignored. As said in the news story, no effective measures were implemented.

In response, Roblox wants to implement age verification using face scans. (By the way, training underage girls to get accustomed to sending their selfies left and right to whatever website asks them to can not possible result in a whole industry of scam websites arising out of nowhere collecting videos of underage girls and telling them to do open their mouth slowly, now close their mouth slowly, and then maybe, I don't know, do something more, something disgusting?? There is no way that will happen, right? Right???)

Roblox is actively pushing age verification laws:

Senator Jim Banks trading Roblox stocks

Senator Jim Banks on the SCREEN Act Cosponsors list

Senator Jim Banks on the Kids Online Safety Act Cosponsors list

EDIT: Jim Banks is actually selling his shares, not buying. There is actually very little evidence of Roblox directly pushing this. This member of Roblox (Tami Bhaumik) is also a member of FOSI (Family Online Safety Institute), but on FOSI's website I can't find a single call for enforcing age verification. Quite the contrary, they seem to be promoting all the right things, like actually talking to and educating children. There is also this tweet posted by Madam Savvy (https://x.com/MadamSavvy/status/1956485031867584935) which points a finger at the mentioned Roblox member, Tami, accusing her of promoting age verification, but it quotes things said by Andrew, who is a professor at Oxford. This is a completely different person and Tami is not being seen agreeing with them. It looks like it is more like the U.S. government noticed the pedophile shitfest happening on Roblox and decided to push age verification agenda based off it: The mentioned Louisiana Attorney General calling for age verification And Roblox not necessarily in support of it.

People who don't give a flying fuck about parenting or their own privacy are actively defending the upcoming legislation in the form of KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act):

Angry Joe speaking out in support of mass Age Verification

Asmongold defending mass Age Verification 1

Asmongold defending mass Age Verification 2

Angry Joe's argument is that parents are not gonna parent shit, they will sit their kid in front of a screen and leave them be, and that's how it is. And he says, that while freedom of speech is good and having no age verification online is good for privacy, it is not good for children who have not developed their brains yet, and those children must be protected, therefore age verification must become the law, the standard.

On the good news,

Trump signed an executive order prohibiting the use of "Reputation Risk and Politicized or Unlawful Debanking": GUARANTEEING FAIR BANKING FOR ALL AMERICANS

U.S. President's executive orders only apply to the executive branch and are used to deal with emergencies and war situations. Visa and MasterCard are not part of the executive branch. And the executive orders may be challenged in court and revoked when a new president comes into office. As such, Trump's order is not the end all-be all solution to any problem and real legislation must be passed: S.401 - Fair Access to Banking Act I read somewhere it is currently pointless and requires some changes to make it functional. But it is sitting there, not yet passed, just like KOSA.

On the bad news again,

PayPal stops processing Steam transactions in all currencies, except EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD

This is because of those unsavory porn games that Steam already delisted, but PayPal's acquiring mystery bank thought it was not enough.

If you really think about the story I just mentioned with PayPal, do you actually think Trump's executive order has worked or made any change?? Seems like a huge no to me!

Also, Visa payment network is apparently an entity separate from Visa itself. If you know who or what this payment network actually is and how it works, please post a response. I have read and watched a bunch of videos, and while it is very clear how ACH works, Visa obviously does not use ACH, and every article and video just talks about some mysterious black box "payment network" that is very unclear if it is even separate from the "payment processor". Or sometimes the "payment processor" is separate even from Visa itself, and then it's unclear what Visa even does, etc. I need this for understanding how easy it would be to replace Visa and whether we can expect new payment processors (or networks?!) to appear in 0-10 years or any foreseeable future.

Also, this news is kind of going nowhere: 4chan tells UK to fuck off with its Online Safety Act

4chan is based in U.S.A and says it does not have to obey UK laws and regulations. Is this a win? Should we root for 4chan? Yes. Yes, we're fighting the same enemy, at the moment.

While a lot of people on Youtube are saying that age verification will lead to censorship and stifling of freedom of speech, and that it is a trojan horse meant to trampoline into even more strict and invasive censorship laws, some are falling for the kids trick or losing hope and believing every western world country will pass laws like this soon.

We have seen what happened to the UK after its UK Online Safety Act. In case you don't know, this should tell you everything you need to know: Wikipedia loses court challenge against UK Online Safety Act

If you still don't understand, Wikipedia having to verify the age of its users would mean that those users would get effectively deanonymized to the UK government. Let's take pre-Turskish invasion Syria, i.e. before Bashar Assad's regime collapsed. Let's say Wikipedia in that Syria required users from Syria to verify their age before posting. Anyone who would try to tell about the atrocities committed by that regime would get deanonymized, and of course there would also be a law requiring that Wikipedia sends its users' data to the Syrian government, and so it would, and those users would be found, promptly arrested, and probably sent to the Syrian "Human Slaughterhouse" prison for totrure, rape and eventual death. You trust UK government now that it won't do any of these things. But eventually, if this continues, it will become just like Syria, and Wikipedia will be on UK's side and will dox you to the UK government, and you will get eliminated for opposing its regime. Does this sound like protecting kids to you?

The reason that I think we're losing this war is because Angry Joe Show is the primary example of a middle-aged gamer, and if even he doesn't understand where this is going and wants to help protect kids, maybe his own child that he very likely has, then we're definitely cooked and nothing can be done. The argument of "protect the kids" is way too strong.

And Asmongold is a prime example of an entrenched republican supporter (even if he says that left vs right thing is bs, you must hear him root for J.D. Vance for president and attack critics of Trump), of which there always seems to be about a half of all voters in U.S.

So if gamers are divided on this or giving up (gamers have a very small political attention span), republicans are (mostly) for this (though, KOSA has both democrats and republicans on its Cosponsors list, so it is going to be bipartisan), then the odds for freedom of the Internet are very bleak.

So, unfortunately, it looks like KOSA will actually pass, and our only hope is that it will be so everywhere, and the data will be protected so poorly by private third-parties, that leaks will spring up day 1 after it coming into effect, and there will be enough outrage to repeal it. But, again, looking at U.K., no repealing has happened yet, other than the opposition party gaining like 100% chance to win next elections. So in U.S. the most we can expect is whatever party this passes under, the next elections will be won by the opposite party. And no one will ever repeal. Watch U.K.: when Reform UK comes into power, they won't repeal UK Online Safety Act. Because once the trojan horse is there, it is too convenient for the government, and will stay in place.

Ladies and gentlement, enjoy your freedom while it lasts. It won't be with us for long.