It's unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and bypass these invasive laws. Their solution? Entirely ban the use of VPNs.
Exactly this.
My humble approach to counter this development is self-hosting as much as I can for myself, my family and my friends. That includes everything useful from bookmark managers, media servers, file sharing, photo libraries and even a kiwix server for offline wikipedia etc.
The Internet can grow from its roots again. It started out with two nodes connecting to each other. Run a link to your friend. Wired or microwave link. In 75 years we might have a whole second internet going on. :D
We already have Internet2
That is great and I do the same (shoutout to my local NAS) and I also try to improve situation outside of my family by running a TOR server since things started to significantly deteriorate 20 years ago or so.
But that are just “waterdrops on hot stones” and have no impact on the 99% of people who don’t have the means or expertise to do likewise.
Main focus must be to steer politics away from deciding such laws and to implement regulation against monopolies and closed infrastructure instead. I know that’s tedious and probably neverending work, but the only viable long-term option I see.