Super Mario Bros. X Forums

you already know where im going with this.

For people who havent heard the news: Basically ooh goverment make act to protect children from pedos and porn and they removed 18+ games from steam (which might be understandable, but still outrageous for people who play them everytime) And now they're demanding Youtube to use AI to search for people under 18 to be blocked and you need ID to continue, which wtf...

how do you react to this?

WHAT??!! IS STEAM/YOUTUBE CRAZY??!! I get it's being done to protect younger people, but why, just WHY???

It sucks when stuff gets taken off Steam or when platforms start ID-checking, but imo this isn’t some new world order thing when it’s been building up for years. YouTube, Steam, all of them have been slowly tightening stuff to stay on the good side of lawsuits and international laws (especially around minors and explicit content, since those under the minimum age still create accounts and pretend to be of age to bypass rules.) It’s not ideal, but it’s not them necessarily going “evil” either. This situation is more like digital growing pains where the internet’s finally being treated like the real world, where IDs and age restrictions are expected.

That said, the execution is always messy. If they’re using AI to autoblock people and it ends up punishing innocent users or throwing up constant roadblocks, then yeah, I’d be just as pissed. But I’d rather critique how they’re doing it than act like the entire idea of age gates is evil.