I got the idea to write this opinion piece a little over 2 months ago, and world events have been happening fast. The following will get political and have some mild swearing, so if that’s not for you, this is your fair warning.
If you want to count AOL as the internet, it became readily available to those who could afford it in the early 1990s. That makes over 30 years that the American public has had access to information and free speech online with some degree of anonymity if people so chose. Children were born and grew up with the internet. Some of those children are old enough to have their own children now. Yet, over 2025, it seemed that a great many of the world’s governments became suddenly terrified of citizens using the internet.
I watched this unfold over the summer with the UK’s Online Safety Act
implementing tighter restrictions including age verification and digital ID, Australia’s digital ID and mandatory age verification just to use a search engine (1), rumors of Canada passing similar laws, and a number of US states implemented age verification and threatened VPN bans. Cities and businesses adopted widespread use of Flock Cameras and it occurred to me that these other countries were some of our closest allies during WW 2. I had to start wondering what kind of ill shit was about to occur in the world.
Though these laws all came under the guise of protect the children
and reduce crime
, I’d like to point out again my point in the opening paragraph—people are fine. In fact crime rates are actually lower than they were in the early ‘90s, perhaps despite public opinion, and there are more people now.
Age verification requires all adults to either submit an ID to an online platform or submit to error-prone facial recognition software. Google maps was sued for tracking the location of it’s users even when location history was turned off. (2) I had my own experience in early 2025 where I visited a pet store, had location off on every app on my phone, and then started getting advertisements for that pet store the next day on Instagram. New TVs can listen to your conversations and some can record you with video. I get that data is a hot commodity if not the hottest there is and that corporations own the US. However, it’s too many countries implementing similar laws all at the same time. All this surveillance and tracking couldn’t simply be to advertise to people and reduce crime, it’s just too coincidental that so many countries are doing this at roughly the same time.
Historically, countries surveil and limit the free speech and anonymity of their citizens when they are isolationist and fearful of their own people. China’s communist government is a big one for this with The Great Firewall
and is considering even stronger laws. A Newsweek article from July 2025 stated:
Internet users in China already have to use their real names to get access to digital services under a 2017 Cybersecurity Law and rights groups fear the new system will mean an intensification of government efforts to control online activity, stamp out dissent and smother free speech. "Internet users across China already endure heavy censorship and control by the government," Shane Yi, a researcher with the group Chinese Human Rights Defenders said in a statement last month. "The new internet ID regulations escalate Beijing's attack on free speech, putting human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, and anyone who questions authority at even greater risk." Xiao Qiang, a research scientist studying internet freedom at the University of California, Berkeley said the system can "directly erase voices it doesn't like from the internet." "So it's more than just a surveillance tool—it is an infrastructure of digital totalitarianism," he said. (3)
Then we have North Korea, who barely lets their citizens use the internet at all. (4) They further their isolationism by restricting mail from any persons in the US, prohibiting any merchandise of any kind. (5). Russia heavily restricts the use of internet and social media. An article from Human Rights Watch in regards to Russia states:
The increasing online censorship is carried out via equipment called “the technological means for countering threats” (ТСПУ or TSPU). This equipment is installed in virtually all networks of the country’s internet service providers under requirements laid out in the so-called sovereign internet law and its by-laws, which aim to create a separate Russian section of the internet. (12)
Afghanistan’s Taliban cut off the entire countries internet for a few days in October of 2025, and Iran cut the internet to silence protesters, keep them from organizing, and prevent the world from watching. (8) These are all totalitarian governments, and if the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and all the other countries in the EU simply cut off internet access or restricted it to an intranet, surely there would be too much public outcry to get away with it. The answer then, is to sureveil, surveil, surveil.
Last year, the Google Play store secretly installed an app on millions of users phones called Safety Core, designed to scan your messages and prevent you from seeing unwanted nudes
. (9) Maybe my life is just not that exciting, but this has been a problem for me never. It’s also not been a problem for anyone I’ve asked. People know that they can just block numbers. You could uninstall the app which took up 2Gigs and used CSS (Client Side Scanning) at least. Google got a lot of backlash for it. Google also got a lot of backlash when they announced that they would no longer allow users to sideload
apps, or install apks. They walked that back, too, but saying that it would just be more difficult
. I do not doubt that Google will simply find a way in the future to re-introduce these things, but it may be sneakier next time, and I bet the gov will be able to get this info from Google as well.
While the United States criticizes North Korea for their draconian laws, Trump has instituted VAT tax on any goods or services an American wants to purchase from another country and put into law widespread tarriffs on trade which have cost the American people around $2.5 billion. (6)(7), strongly dissuading the average citizen from ordering something off a person in another country from Etsy for example. He’s also probably destroyed our relationships with NATO countries since his recent tantrum over Greenland. The US is hypocritically becoming isolationist.
Trump has already stated that protesters wearing masks should be illegal. The flock cameras installed in cities and businesses nationwide use facial recognition technology on everyone they record including children. See the youtube video by Benn Jordan This Flock Camera Leak is like Netflix for Stalkers
. Watch it on GrayJay, or use a an adblocker. Watch how it zooms in on people. The government want to know who is at protests. Location trackers in apps follow your every move, and if you’re required to submit ID, whether digital, regular, or biometric just to use a search engine or a social media site, all your info, everything you do, the government wants to know.
Bills have been introduced in States aimed at banning VPNs to prevent people from getting around ID requirements. A particularly concerning one was Michigan House Bill 4938, which not only sought to ban VPNs, pornography of any kind, ASMR and any mention of being transgender:
While afaik this bill has been stalled in the Michigan house probably due to being obvious overreach by the religious alt-right and their brand of xenophobic morality
, it may resurface depending on the outcome of the next gubernatorial election in the state in which the primary will take place in August of this year. Luckily, courts have deemed unconstitutional age verification laws in Louisiana and Texas, but many US states still have them according to the EFF, which states in an article:
2025 also saw the rise of device-level and app-store age verification laws, which shift the obligation to verify users onto app stores and operating system providers. These laws seriously impact users’ (adults and young people alike) from accessing information, particularly since these laws block a much broader swath of content (not only adult or sexual content), but every bit of content provided by every application. (14)
The aforementioned ill shit is happening now. Around the time Trump decided to start bombing suspected drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, Senators put out a PSA reminding military personnel that they have the right to deny unlawful orders. It was just a reminder as this is something military personnel already know, he however afterward stated that they were traitors
and demanded trial for their seditious behavior
. (10)(11) It should be noted that while a grand jury refused to indict the 6 senators who made the PSA, the Department of Justice under Trump's authority is trying this authoritarian and anti-democratic crap none-the-less. He even said We took the freedom of speech away
on the topic of burning flags, and whether you agree or disagree with the practice, IS free expression which has been upheld by the supreme court twice. (16)
There was the second-strike controversy which seems to be largely forgotten by main stream media already, and he literally kidnapped Venezuelan President Maduro on January 3, 2026. Communist Leader or not, many countries believe this to be illegal under international law, and it was done without congressional approval. He just about started a war with Greenland and it’s suzerain nation, Denmark; NATO allies had begun to send troops there. The US is criticizing Iran for killing protesters, we’re killing our own with ICE agents, the latest was Alex Pretti on Jan 4, 2026. While the US killing protesters is nothing new, (see the Kent State Shootings 1970 for one example), it is no less egregious.
It is citizen organization that scares the government the most. In September of 2025, the government of Nepal was toppled by a coup largely organized on Discord. This Wired article explains how the government tried it’s best to shut down citizens’ access to social media when they knew there was growing unrest, but they forgot about Discord. Today, Feb 2, 2026, I learned that Discord has implemented world-wide age verification that will be mandatory starting next month. Today, Feb 16, I learned that Discord is using Persona, co-founded by Peter Thiel of Palatir (17), (18) because at this point why would it be anything else?!? Like I said, things are changing fast.
The current regime in the US can’t be trusted, doesn’t obey or respect the 1st amendment, and you either think I’m some crazy radicalized leftist or your with me. I know that I am an American and I don’t want this country to become China, Russia or the UK. I know that our rights are being taken away. And so:
The title of this page is incorrect. It is not a war on the internet—it is a war on people.
I started writing this a few weeks ago, many things have happened since. I’ve just learned that neocities is blocked by bing and duck duck go. (15) I decided not to add a section on how to protect your digital privacy as most people on here are at the very least a little tech savvy. Most people on here are probably more tech savvy than I am. I decided not to add a section about how to keep yourself safe if you protest because you probably already know to disable biometrics on your phone. Just keep your eyes open and above all, RESIST.