It’s been about six months since I started the ReadyMade Vault and I have to say I’ve really been liking it. Or, in another term, I’m a bit miffed I didn’t start it sooner! I grew up with the internet and I had messed around with making websites in the past, yet actually putting my full weight behind it has always been a struggle as someone who knows little about coding. Putting together the Vault was kind of my introduction to HTML actually, and it’s why I went with the Zonelets base rather than doing it all myself. There’s still work to be done but I like having this non-YouTube place to speak. I’ve really grown to despise platforms like Twitter and Instagram, and don’t get me started on Reddit! Having my own site is certainly a good alternative, and with all of the shit happening these days, it feels like the safest bet. I’m certainly still concerned about the state of the internet, however, and it's both frustrating and scary to me that few people online are as active as they should be about some bipartisan pushes both here in America and across the world. Let’s talk about that for a moment.
Age verification is a bad idea. No matter how you cut it, the idea doesn’t work. It’s not some magic bullet solution that creates a safe space for kids. If anything, it only makes it more dangerous.
One of the biggest problems today is social media and tech companies having too much data. I’m not even talking about something as outwardly horrifying as Palantir here. Google, Meta, X, and more have way more info on you than you’d like to think about. They have also taken info about children, something which is against the law here in the States. Add to this the algorithms of these platforms, with some directly harming their users, and you have a recipe for legislation. You can frame it as being about “child safety” and get co-sponsors. Here’s the problem: all of it. How do you verify if someone is an adult? Obviously inputting your birthday isn’t doing enough so what’s next? The answer from the major social media companies has been to take even more data. No kidding! Take Discord for example. When the U.K. enacted their ID law, their answer was to either take your ID or to get a face scan/gather biometric data. This was totally fine by the law. See the problem here? In the same breath as lawmakers saying social media companies have too much data, they’re also ordering those same companies to take more data. That’s problem number one.
Problem number two is that now the data exists and is ready to be abused. Going back to Discord’s U.K. verification, not even a year after the law was enacted over seventy thousand IDs were leaked in a 1.5tb stash. Discord said they didn’t have the data and blamed a third party company, but the damage was done. This showed exactly why age verification measures are a dangerous concept. Data leaks are not a matter of if but a matter of when, and we are putting way more on the line than lawmakers want to admit. It’s a data broker’s wildest fantasy!
Problem three is who decides what is safe? What needs to be gated and what is safe for all to access? The Kids Online Safety Act, a proposed “child safety” bill here in America, would designate that to the FTC. What’s “unsafe” to Republicans is no mystery either. Marsha Blackburn already stated that KOSA would be a means to censor transgender Americans, and we can only assume that this is merely the starting point. Adding onto this is that these bills wouldn’t just censor content, they’d monitor it too. DHS is already trying to get the identities of accounts critical of ICE. They won’t need to issue a subpoena if the IDs are tied right to the accounts, something which based on previous actions we (one again) can only assume.
And here’s a big one, but not the final one. What does it actually do for children? Let’s look at Australia. Just as advocates warned the social media ban harmed kids with disabilities. That’s going to be true no matter where you are. We adults might not like the idea but the truth is that a lot of kids find community online. Not just the marginalized ones either. I can speak from experience. It is a place to express yourself, it’s a place to find people with common interests, it can be a good thing. There’s danger and risk involved, of course, but banning kids or placing them behind strict gates is only going to be damaging. I think for Republicans that’s kind of the point.
Age verification is one thing, but destroying the ability to post is another. That’s what the Sunset Section 230 Act is trying to push towards. Section 230 is a foundational provision which makes it so that platforms are not liable for the illegal actions of a user. This doesn’t mean that platforms have no responsibility but it does protect them from frivolous lawsuits. For example, if people are critical of a brand on YouTube, that brand cannot sue YouTube for defamation because they hosted it. It’s a good, foundational law, but it’s always been controversial for a lot of reasons, and there’s been numerous pushes to get rid of it. What’s frustrating is that we’re doing this in 2026. We have, more than ever, an insane amount of bad faith actors trying to control speech. Destroying 230 gives those actors the means to do so. Because of this, it becomes a significant burden for all sites and platforms to host user generated content. This consolidates power to the already powerful, and narratives will go unchecked. This isn’t something that just destroyings things like online organizing, this impacts everyone, from people running shops and databases to you personally. The ironic (and infuriating) thing is that destroying Section 230 is often touted as an anti-big tech move, but who has the money to deal with the fallout? It’s not smaller social media sites like Bluesky, it’s the big companies like Meta and Google. They will be the winners in all of this.
It should come as no surprise that the Heritage Foundation supports both age verification and getting rid of Section 230. What pisses me off the most is that people believe it won’t be abused. Senators like Dick Durbin and advocates like Joseph-Gordon Levitt seem to genuinely believe these types of laws can’t be abused at a time when law is being abused or ignored every day. They’re ignoring their own colleagues like Senator Ron Wyden and platforms like Wikipedia to push for bills that are already being described as censorship methods by one party. It’s so infuriating that you forget the “child safety” element of it all. Where is that? All I see is the government creating numerous privacy problems while creating the framework for mass censorship.
The good thing about the attempts to destroy Section 230 or pass the Kids Online Safety Act is that they’ve failed many times before, and can fail again. Things are such a shitshow right now that there’s no guarantee of anything. However, that doesn’t mean we can rest on blind faith. There needs to be serious pressure on Congress to back away from these attempts to censor free speech. You can call your representatives and senators every day. You can share posts and petitions from the EFF, Fight For The Future, and TechDirt online, while also supporting them monetarily. You can educate people on what these bills would do. The people have a lot of power, it just needs to be exercised.
Where was I? Right, the Vault.
All of the videos are now up on the Internet Archive in 720p, though some are up in HD. I’ve been trying to get HD versions up for a while now but I’ve had a lot of trouble with it. The Internet Archive’s uploading procedure really struggles with big files and I’ve had it flat out fail to take the high quality files consistently. If you have any good alternatives that are committed to archival work, please let me know. The blog has been a fun thing to write for. It’s a good way to talk about some recent news in a way that isn’t uploaded to YouTube. It’s also been good to release some unfinished scripts, especially my take on Spotify. I wrote that one for months but could never finish it due to just how bad things were regarding them. All of this was prior to the Helsing investment last year and the major boycott (which I wholeheartedly support). I loved making videos but I think my ambitions got the best of me and tanked that project, and took everything under it out with it.
There are some plans for the future. For example, I’ve been toying around with the idea of a full annotated breakdown of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I tried to make this a video but since the album is so dense with meaning, it’s honestly easier to take in as written pieces. Maybe there will be a video component just in case but I’m leaning towards the web side of it. I’ve also had some other plans that can only be done on the website, but I’ll keep those secret for now as I have no clue if they’re likely to pan out. The Lamb is at least partially written so there’s that. I have also been wondering if I should do one final stream. Would that be cool? Let me know.
I think the ReadyMade Vault exists for a lot of valid reasons, but it's also been fun to work on, and I hope that you all enjoy what I’ve been doing here.