At 8/8/25 08:01 PM, Anamonator wrote:Attention all gooners. Trump has saved your nsfw games (In America).

(Just in case you don't trust videos, here are official sources)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/guaranteeing-fair-banking-for-all-americans
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/293/text

At 8/8/25 11:43 PM, NothanyTPM wrote:Friendly reminder that the government is not your babysitter!

Why do so many parents turn to the government to solve their first-world problems? The government is there to regulate the economy and maintain a functioning society. It's not there to tell little Timmy to go to bed at 10 o-clock, so he can wake-up bright and early to go to school!!!

At 8/9/25 08:03 AM, DioShiba wrote:

At 8/8/25 11:43 PM, NothanyTPM wrote:Friendly reminder that the government is not your babysitter!

Why do so many parents turn to the government to solve their first-world problems? The government is there to regulate the economy and maintain a functioning society. It's not there to tell little Timmy to go to bed at 10 o-clock, so he can wake-up bright and early to go to school!!!

Because people on the left somehow think that big government can solve all social issues.

At 8/9/25 08:13 AM, TomFulp wrote:

At 8/9/25 08:03 AM, DioShiba wrote:

At 8/8/25 11:43 PM, NothanyTPM wrote:Friendly reminder that the government is not your babysitter!

Why do so many parents turn to the government to solve their first-world problems? The government is there to regulate the economy and maintain a functioning society. It's not there to tell little Timmy to go to bed at 10 o-clock, so he can wake-up bright and early to go to school!!!

Because people on the left somehow think that big government can solve all social issues.

To be fair, it's been Republicans who keep introducing ID check laws in individual US states.

At 8/9/25 08:13 AM, TomFulp wrote:

At 8/9/25 08:03 AM, DioShiba wrote:

At 8/8/25 11:43 PM, NothanyTPM wrote:Friendly reminder that the government is not your babysitter!

Why do so many parents turn to the government to solve their first-world problems? The government is there to regulate the economy and maintain a functioning society. It's not there to tell little Timmy to go to bed at 10 o-clock, so he can wake-up bright and early to go to school!!!

Because people on the left somehow think that big government can solve all social issues.

To be fair, it's been Republicans who keep introducing ID check laws in individual US states.

At 8/8/25 03:09 PM, ShangXian wrote:While reading Tom's first message where he updated info about EU part, I was also surfing this website: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-publishes-guidelines-protection-minors

from this other site that can be found in his first updated message, and when scrolling down I also clicked on the links below

@TomFulp do you remember when I asked when the Digital ID Wallet for EU come? Well, reading the article "The EU approach to age verification", it is said that the European Digital Identity Wallets are to be rolled out by the end of 2026. So this answers partially our questions.

So if I understood well by reading those articles and to sum up for EU citizens here, on 14 July 2025, the Commission released the first version of an EU white-label age-verification blueprint, as a basis for a user-friendly and privacy-preserving age verification method across Member States. This blueprint release launches a pilot phase during which a software solution for age verification will be tested and further customised in collaboration with Member States, online platforms and end-users. Denmark, France, Greece, Italy and Spain will be the first to take up the technical solution in view of taking it up in their national digital wallets or publishing a customised national age verification app on the app stores.

In parallel, there will be thorough testing with online platforms, including adult content providers. Online platforms that are not involved yet are invited to participate in the pilot and join the testing phase. I am very glad it is based on open-source technology though. But at the same time it will technically be possible to extend the age verification solution to other age limits (and this worries me a bit), or to other use-cases, such as purchasing alcohol. Member States can decide to do so when customising it to the national context, or at a later stage.

Then from what I could understand online services will only receive a proof that the user is over 18, without any other personal details. The processes of issuance and presentation will be handled by separate entities, ensuring privacy. Moreover, the proof provider will not be informed about the services where the proof is used. Each proof will only be used once, to prevent cross-service tracking.

What will happen next?

During the pilot phase, the age verification solution will be further enhanced with new features. Apart from eID, further updates will include additional options for users to prove they are over 18. At a later stage, all Member States will receive tailored implementation strategies that allow them to integrate the solution in their national digital wallets or publish localised apps on the app stores to make them available to end users.

So this is what I could understand by reading the other articles. I hope it helps a bit.

At 8/9/25 03:21 PM, shade-bot wrote:

At 8/9/25 10:12 AM, DioShiba wrote:
True, though I'd honestly say that at the very least they republicans will stab everyone in the front and not the back.

"I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side"

Best not to pledge an allegiance with a party. It's easy to process black and white. Grey to process is uncomfortable and tiring but at least you'll never be disappointed or suffer from cognitive dissonance.

At 8/6/25 11:17 AM, cacodayum wrote:

At 8/5/25 04:40 AM, Craextic wrote:

At 7/30/25 04:38 PM, TomFulp wrote:The UK Online Safety Act deadline has arrived, requiring websites to implement “highly effective age assurance” for people looking to access material intended for adults.

A number of large sites have rolled out changes and people aren’t pleased. VPN use in the UK is skyrocketing, roughly half a million people have signed a petition to repeal the law and the Reform UK party is running on repealing it.

Newgrounds has been in correspondence with Ofcom (UK regulator) for the past year and has been working towards this deadline, despite missing it. We had already taken important steps like bringing age ratings to forum threads, blog posts and collabinator entries but when it comes to introducing additional layers of age verification, we decided it was time for some major internal overhauls, so that we aren’t just duct taping new messes to any already complicated system.

Regardless of age verification, these overhauls have been benefitting the site with better performance and will make NG easier to maintain into the future.

Regarding age verification, here is our current plan for UK users:

1. If your account is more than ten years old, we will assume you are currently over 18. This is in line with one of the methods of effective age assurance, which involves paying a third party to match your email address against some sort of database of scraped data, which determines if your email has been in use for a long time. We have our own long-term data, so we’ll use that instead.

2. If your account ever bought Supporter status with a credit card and we can confirm that with the payment processor, we will assume you are over 18 because you need to be 18 in the UK to have a credit card.

3. If your account ever bought Supporter status more than two years ago, we will assume you are over 18 because you need to be at least 16 to have a Paypal or debit card in the UK (assuming we are right about this - Update - apparently there are options for kids as young as six to get debit cards).

4. If none of the above applies, you will have the opportunity to pay a small one-time fee via credit card as confirmation of your age.

We are not planning to offer things like ID checks or facial recognition because these require us to pay a third party to confirm each person. Because Newgrounds runs at a loss and doesn’t monetize users very well, this is not an option for us. As Wired noted, Big Tech is the only winner of the Online Safety Act because smaller websites can’t afford to keep up with this sort of regulation.

European Union

The EU has now announced their guidelines to protect minors and will be requiring effective age assurance.

Unlike the UK, the EU has announced plans to establish a Digital ID Wallet. Assuming this happens, it should mean EU users can verify their age on NG for free.

That is good for users but to be frank, it would have been better for NG to just extend what we are already building for the UK. Instead, we will have to build a custom solution that interfaces with the Digital ID API. That’s assuming the Digital ID even happens; we may need to implement the UK solution in the meantime.

Side note, EU peeps might also want to check out the Stop Killing Games initiative.

America

There are now 24 states that have passed laws around age verification, requiring an ID check. Most of these laws have exemptions for social media and sites that aren’t entirely dedicated to porn but it’s likely we will need to implement verification in at least some states in the months ahead. If this happens, users will be charged a one-time verification fee and will need to verify their ID with a third party service. Your ID would not be retained by the third party, who only returns a True or False value for our records.

I am curious though, if you are in a US state and are experiencing ID checks on platforms like X, Bluesky or Reddit, let me know which state.

Country-wide, the Kids Online Safety Act has come back from the dead and there are concerns about how it will be implemented by the current administration.

KOSA does propose directing federal agencies to study device-level and OS-level age verification methods. I touched on this in my January Online Safety Update, where I referenced the Digital Age Assurance Act (DAAA). I’ll never understand why this wasn’t the starting point for any of these laws but I imagine Google, Apple and Microsoft might know why.

Because lawmakers ignored device-level verification, they have put the onus on millions of websites to do it instead. While you can generally trust a site like Newgrounds, things get murky when people start verifying on unknown sites. Even our kids will be accustomed to it, with apps like Roblox implementing face scans instead of requesting age data from the device. Imagine the sort of extortion that can happen when bad actors get personal identification from people who are looking at embarrassing topics. A whole new industry of scammers is probably being built around this.

Closing Thoughts

None of this has been fun but we’re trying to do what we need to do for NG to continue to exist.

One positive is that charging small verification fees will hopefully get Newgrounds closer to break-even, assuming we don’t run into trouble with payment processors. In the meantime, it would be greatly appreciated if more of you could become Supporters.

Other News

Random-storykeeper has announced the Art Inspired Music Winners!

Figburn has announced the Contract Rush Art Contest Winners!

He also made a pretty site skin to celebrate the launch of Contract Rush on Steam.

Pjorg wrote a great postmortem for Babe Alert!

Aalasteir wrote a good Online Safety Guide.

Little-Radiodemon (aka Little-Rena) is looking for BBS Award Helpers.

Marbardan82 was bitten by a bat and is offering emergency commissions due to lack of insurance. Hopefully he will still make it to the Short Short Fest here in PA.

Catch up on our Best of June if you missed those.

why the fuck would you comply with this? they can't physically force the site to comply, and they can't issue international fines outside of their jurisdiction that arent the website owner's responsibility

it's better to have the site blocked than to comply and give the orwellians what they want

You know what- I think I kind of agree with this one... I'm figuring Tom & the gang have already looked into the options though. Not to mention, the stupid ass law has already passed (if i understood correctly) in Canada too, or at least they're trying. This dumb shit's gonna be everywhere. They may as well have the system up & running when it starts.

At 8/6/25 08:27 PM, KittyhawkMontrose wrote:

At 8/6/25 12:51 PM, DioShiba wrote:

I'm still of the solution that the governent makes internet access illegal for children under 15-16 in addition to smartphones and tablets instead of forcing censorship.

That's still censorship. And that still requires an age check, so we're back to square one. I think we need to start separating ourselves from these censorious assholes with the tools that are already available.

I'm not exactly clear on how age restrictions are the same thing as censorship.

Care to explain where that thought process is going? Because the last I checked enforcing restrictions on who sees what content based on what age isn't exactly censorship in the sense that its prohibited for everyone to see the content that's being restricted in that respect.

I know in recent years the word censorship has come to mean just "bad", but it goes both ways. Bad censorship is like removing To Kill a Mockingbird from school libraries, and then there are good uses of censorship, like keeping hard core pornography away from kids. But they are both still censorship.