The Great Internet Lockdown: How Payment Processors, Government Regulations, and Activist Groups Are Reshaping the Digital Landscape

My Privacy Blog

28 Jul 2025 — 19 min read

An in-depth analysis of the interconnected web of censorship, control, and corporate compliance transforming the global internet in 2025

Executive Summary

In July 2025, a perfect storm of regulatory enforcement, payment processor pressure, and activist campaigns converged to fundamentally alter the internet as we know it. What began as targeted campaigns against adult content on gaming platforms rapidly evolved into a comprehensive restructuring of online freedoms across multiple jurisdictions. This article examines how the confluence of the UK's Online Safety Act, payment processor censorship, EU Digital Services Act enforcement, and proposed US legislation like KOSA is creating an unprecedented era of digital control that extends far beyond its stated aims of protecting children.

The Catalyst: Collective Shout and the Payment Processor Campaign

The Beginning of Financial Censorship

The current crisis began in April 2025 when Australian activist group Collective Shout, founded by self-described "pro-life feminist" Melinda Tankard Reist, launched a campaign targeting Steam and Itch.io over a game called "No Mercy." Unable to get direct responses from the platforms, Collective Shout pivoted to pressuring payment processors including Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal.

On July 16, 2025, Valve quietly updated Steam's publishing guidelines to prohibit "Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers." The deliberately vague language gave payment processors unprecedented power to determine what content could be sold on the platform.

The result was immediate and devastating:

Nearly 100 adult-themed games were removed from Steam
Itch.io deindexed thousands of games from search and browse pages
Legitimate artistic works caught in the crossfire, including:
- The award-winning indie game "Mouthwashing"
- The horror RPG series "Fear & Hunger"
- The critically acclaimed "Consume Me"
Over 77,000 signatures accumulated on a Change.org petition opposing the censorship

The Hypocrisy and Inconsistency

Critics quickly noted the blatant hypocrisy in Collective Shout's approach. The organization had previously defended the controversial Netflix film "Cuties" while simultaneously campaigning against Grand Theft Auto V and attempting to ban Detroit: Become Human for depicting domestic violence - content specifically designed to create empathy for abuse victims. More tellingly, payment processors that now claim moral authority had previously allowed platforms like OnlyFans to operate with minimal oversight despite credible reports of real abuse content.

As Nier creator Yoko Taro warned: "It implies that by controlling payment processing companies, you can even censor another country's free speech."

Collective Shout's Damage Control

As backlash intensified, Collective Shout attempted damage control. When contacted by TheGamer, the organization denied calling for the complete removal of adult games from Itch.io, claiming they only targeted specific titles. However, they admitted to orchestrating the payment processor pressure campaign that resulted in blanket censorship. Their response that "Steam did not respond to us" was used to justify bypassing platforms entirely and going straight to financial chokepoints.

The reality is that everyone - Steam, Japan, the UK government, the Australian government, and Itch.io - all "pandered to Visa," creating what critics describe as a "spineless" capitulation to unelected corporate moral police.

The UK Online Safety Act: From Theory to Enforcement

July 25, 2025: The Day Everything Changed

The UK's Online Safety Act, which received Royal Assent in October 2023, entered its most controversial phase on July 25, 2025. The age verification requirements transformed overnight from theoretical provisions to enforced reality, triggering:

A 1,400% surge in UK VPN signups according to Proton VPN
Mass implementation of invasive age verification across platforms
The withdrawal of services like Bellesa and BitChute from the UK market
Reddit, Discord, X, and even non-adult platforms implementing ID verification

The Failures of Age Verification

Within hours of implementation, the supposed "robust" age verification systems proved laughably inadequate. Users discovered they could bypass Discord's age checks using:

AI-generated pictures
Fortnite character screenshots
Images from video games like Death Stranding
Any high-resolution game character with facial features

This immediate failure suggests that facial scanning will inevitably be removed in favor of government ID verification only - creating a comprehensive surveillance infrastructure under the guise of child protection.

The Scope Creep

What was sold as protection for children quickly expanded far beyond adult content. The Act requires age verification for any service that allows user interaction, including:

Social media platforms
Video sharing sites
Dating applications
Online forums
File sharing services
Educational platforms like Wikipedia

Horror games became collateral damage, with platforms preemptively banning titles that might be deemed "harmful" despite containing no sexual content - only atmospheric horror elements that have been part of gaming culture for decades.

The Political Monitoring Revelation

In a chilling development, reports emerged of an "elite team of police officers" assembled by the Home Office to monitor social media for "anti-migrant sentiment." This division aims to "maximise social media intelligence," with critics like Nigel Farage warning it represents "the beginning of the state controlling free speech."

Evidence suggests authorities are already using the Act to suppress legitimate political discourse:

Footage of protests outside asylum-seeker hotels being blocked
Anti-immigration content from parliamentary speeches labeled as "not safe for kids"
The irony that 16-year-olds may soon be able to vote in the UK, yet are deemed too immature to view political content

The VPN Ban Threat

Labour MP Sarah Champion has already launched campaigns against VPNs, with the party showing historical support for restricting their use. As one Labour source revealed: "We could ban the use of Virtual Private Networks after their use has skyrocketed to avoid the restrictions imposed by the Online Safety Act."

The petition to repeal the Online Safety Act has gathered over 280,000 signatures, with citizens warning that "the scope of the Online Safety act is far broader and restrictive than is necessary in a free society."

The Global VPN Crackdown

Russia's Escalation

Russia passed restrictive VPN legislation in July 2025, with the State Duma approving amendments that:

Introduce fines up to 500,000 rubles (~$6,300) for advertising VPNs
Penalize "intentional searching for extremist materials" with fines of 1,000-5,000 rubles
Target VPN services providing access to banned sites for blocking by Roskomnadzor
Create a pathway to ban WhatsApp, with sources claiming "there's a 99-percent chance it will happen"

The government is pushing domestic alternatives like "Max" - a messaging app with no end-to-end encryption that reserves the right to share user data with security services. Despite official denials about an August 1 WhatsApp/VPN ban, the trajectory is clear: Russia is systematically eliminating tools for circumventing state censorship.

UK's Infrastructure Attacks

Beyond potential legislation, UK authorities are attacking VPN infrastructure through corporate pressure. Cloudflare's unprecedented blocking of pirate sites for UK users represents a new escalation - one that specifically targets VPN users. Unlike traditional ISP blocks that VPNs easily bypass, Cloudflare's geo-blocking at the CDN level catches users even when connected to UK-based VPN servers.

This represents the first time a major content delivery network has participated in UK content blocking, affecting approximately 200 domains and setting a dangerous precedent for infrastructure-level censorship.

Wikipedia's Stand: The Canary in the Digital Coal Mine

The Legal Challenge

The Wikimedia Foundation's legal challenge to the UK Online Safety Act represents a crucial test case. If Wikipedia is classified as a "Category 1" service (platforms with over 7 million monthly UK users), it would face requirements that fundamentally undermine its model:

Mandatory identity verification for contributors
Content moderation systems incompatible with collaborative editing
Privacy violations that could expose editors to authoritarian regimes
Potential implementation of a "quota-based" system limiting UK access

The High Court hearings on July 22-23, 2025 marked the first legal challenge to the Act's categorization framework. Wikipedia has threatened to block UK access entirely rather than comply with requirements that would destroy its collaborative model.

The Broader Implications

Wikipedia's case highlights how regulations ostensibly aimed at protecting children threaten fundamental internet infrastructure. The encyclopedia received 776 million views from the UK in June 2025 alone, making it a critical educational resource now under threat.

The EU Digital Services Act: The Brussels Effect Goes Global

Congressional Pushback

On July 25, 2025, the US House Judiciary Committee released a scathing report titled "The Foreign Censorship Threat: How the European Union's Digital Services Act Compels Global Censorship and Infringes on American Free Speech."

Key findings include:

The DSA forces platforms to change global content policies, not just EU-specific ones
European censors labeled the statement "we need to take back our country" as "illegal hate speech"
Political speech, including humor and satire, is being systematically targeted
The "Brussels Effect" means EU regulations become de facto global standards