I Love Having To Put My Id To Do Anything! Yay! Protecting The Children!

Oh, so the ENTIRE age verification crusade was just a Trojan horse for mass surveillance? *shocked Pikachu face* Who could have POSSIBLY seen this coming?!

New York's Attorney General wanted Steam to collect invasive data on users worldwide (because apparently jurisdiction is just a suggestion now) to catch people using VPNs. You know, for the CHILDREN. Except... payment methods already verify age. So really they just want to know everything about you, track your location, and build a nice little data profile. But hey, it's all about protecting kids, right? RIGHT?!

The astronaut meme format absolutely DELIVERS here. "Wait, the whole lawsuit demanding more data collection and age verification was never about protecting children?" *points gun* "Always has been." Just corporate surveillance dressed up in a "think of the children" costume. Classic move—wrap privacy invasion in moral panic and watch everyone hand over their data willingly.

Fun fact: Valve basically said "our users actually care about privacy, so no thanks" and called out this nonsense. Rare corporate W.