By now, you’ve probably realized the internet is being slowly fitted into a digital checkpoint.
Everything is being scrubbed down, sanitized, and locked behind a digital turnstile with a flashing sign that says: Show us your ID.
Substack, that cozy digital home where newsletter authors rant, muse, and argue about everything from politics to fan fiction of 19th-century philosophers, is the latest to be roped into the bureaucratic puppet show known as the UK’s Online Safety Act.
And the British government has decided that if you’re reading a mildly spicy newsletter, you must first present identification. No, really.
To access some of the platform’s content, you may soon have to upload a selfie and a government-issued ID.
What this means for readers in the UK is simple: prepare to be interrupted. You’re sitting down to read your favorite newsletter. Maybe it’s political commentary, maybe it’s a writer who occasionally uses words like “orgasmic” while referring to cake.
Either way, you click. And boom. Content blurred, comment section blocked, and your feed now behind a velvet rope manned by an algorithm with a clipboard.
Hellbound and Down 