Nexus Mods Throws Users Under the Bus, Implements Age Verification

Nexus Mods is the latest site to screw over their users and implement age verification at the behest of the UK government.

When multiple governments pushed age verification laws, the hope was that large web services would show the same spine they showed SOPA so many years ago. Specifically, they would take the nuclear option and block the country entirely and say that they can return once their respective government learns to behave. Pornhub at first seemed to be willing to do this in the earlier stages, but as government expanded their attack on the wider open internet, the large platforms and websites apparently decided that just surrendering was a better option.

The sites that opted for immediate surrender includes Discord, Reddit, Bluesky, Roblox, XBox, YouTube, Spotify, and Rockstar. While a majority chose the spineless surrender chickens rout, one site did at least fight back. That site happened to be Wikipedia which at least chose to look out for the interest of their users. While Wikipedia got dealt a blow in court, they at least bucked the trend of large platforms and websites opting to throw their users under the bus.

Sadly, the trend of surrendering users is continuing and another site just got added to the list. That happens to be Nexus Mods. From The Gamer:

Today, Nexus Mods joined their ranks, announcing that ID verification will be required in the UK for adult mods starting next week. “As a UK-based company, we’re legally required to protect children online and ensure adult content is only accessible to adults,” head of content Sarah ‘SlugGirl’ stated. “Removing adult content entirely was never a viable option, so we’re introducing an age verification system that will allow adults to continue accessing it”.

Nexus Mods, like Discord, will use k-ID, which works in two ways. You can either upload a passport or driving license to prove your age, or have the site scan your face to determine roughly how old you are. “If you’ve already verified with k-ID on another service, your status may carry over automatically,” Nexus explained.

How this will work is simple: any mods or collections flagged with the ‘Adult’ tag will be hidden unless you are verified. Likewise, the Supporter Image Share won’t be available to anyone who hasn’t proven that they are over 18.

Once again, the viable option available to Nexus Mods was to block the UK entirely. By submitting to this awful law, Nexus Mods adds their vote into the pool of web services saying that mass government surveillance and censorship is perfectly fine. Does the government want to monitor absolutely everything their users do? Websites like Nexus Mods sure as hell won’t object to that because looking out for the interest of their users is just too much to ask in the first place.

The obvious knock on effect is that government would be further inspired to push for even more draconian laws in the future. What form that takes is anyone’s guess at this point, but we can look at moments like these and say this is what led to that.

At any rate, more awful precedent is being set here and I think a lot of people are going to look back at moments like these and say that this is where the internet went wrong.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.