There's a lot of discussion of Mississippi's age verification law for social media today, after Bluesky announced they're blocking the state.
Note that Mississippi's requirements go far beyond the Online Safety Act, MIssissippi's law, HB 1126, requires age verification for all users, and parental consent for users under 18., no matter what the content of the site is. Last week the US Supreme Court declined to block the law while it's being challenged in the courts, even though Kavanaugh described it as "likely unconstitutional".
The law clearly should be found unconstitutional - the amicus brief from @CenDemTech, @eff et al discusses why. Still, with the current Supreme Court, who knows; they just the (somewhat narrower) Texas age verification law also should have been found unconstitutional, but SCOTUS said it was okay. So who knows. And of course this is exactly the kind of chilling effect they're aiming for, which is why it's so disappointing that SCOTUS didn't block its enforcement until the case is heard.
As far as I know there isn't any guidance yet for people running fedi instances (or message boards, which are also covered). If you're running a US-based fedi instance, it's might well be worth talking to your lawyer about this. Here's the legislation, and here's the langauge from Section 4 (1)
"A digital service provider may not enter into an agreement with a person to create an account with a digital service unless the person has registered the person's age with the digital service provider. A digital service provider shall make commercially reasonable efforts to verify the age of the person creating an account with a level of certainty appropriate to the risks that arise from the information management practices of the digital service provider."
@fediverse @fediversenews
#fediverse #mississippi #ageVerification
"It's decentralized! It's open!" they've said. But, despite all doubts from the very beginning, Bluesky is no option for an open and decentralized web at all. There ARE reasons for protecting users under 18, but cutting a whole state off the platform is simply a certain kind of censorship.
There was hope for this service but the crypto-bro-background and the current state of the USA did a complete disservice to the platform, disqualifying it as an alternative for any federated, decentralized and free network like Mastodon and Co.!
https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-22-2025-mississippi-hb1126
#fediverse #mississippi #ageVerification
If you run any instance that is federated and has users that could sign in from that state it makes complete sense to block their IP addresses. Why on earth would someone running a Mastodon instance take on risk unlless they were in another country where there was no risk of repercussions.
If you're just hoping that small fish won't get fried that's possibly true. But admins likely won't want to find out if they will just on principles.
It‘s not only the registration, it‘s the complete usage of the service. Tricky thing.
In my eyes, this will be just the tip of the iceberg. Mississippi now, what reason comes next? DJT wanting to exclude specific groups of users? Cut off whole countries? Who knows... There will be additional reasons and if you ask me, this is just the beginning with the ugly potential to turn into censorship.
Got the point, but surely they will have more legal tools than I do with my single-user Mastodon-instance - which has registrations disabled, but doesn‘t prevent any country from reaching it. 🤷🏼♂️
The way I view it is that Bluesky is a new company that is growing fast, while a site like Pornhub has been around longer and I'm sure has a large legal team that monitors laws all the time. If Pornhub said it was better to cut their losses and see if waiting out and or not seeing a good legal standing to fight with these states, Bluesky likely didn't have much of a chance.
You need to explain why a mastodon instance in a state without those laws care what a different state does
I don't need to explain anything. If you want to host something with content that is illegal in another state and you choose to not put up any protections to block users from accessing the content in that state, you very well may be sued some day. If you block users from signing up from those states and/or block those IP addresses from accessing your site, you likely would have grounds for it to be dismissed before ever having to do anything. State lines do not protect you against lawsuits.
Yeah, don't listen to anybody who says "they can't fine me or sue me if I'm in a different state" or "they can't do anything about it if they win." Of course we don't know who they'll target when they start enforcing the law, and it's possible that the law will be found unconstitutional ... still, they can fine you, and they can sue, so if you decide not to geoblock them yet make sure you're thinking through the risks.
I haven't seen anything yet on how strong a defense geoblocking Mississippi will be in practice. Bluesky obviously thinks it puts them in a stronger position than not geoblocking, but at this point we really don't know.
they literally do? what do you think state lines even do?
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIV-S1-5-1/ALDE_00013024/
If you are fined in one state they will ask your state to enforce the penalty and they are usually legally required to do so by the federal government.
The part of Mississippi saying it may have criminal punishments as well may have more leeway, as you won't get extradited if it isn't a felony in most states. But we don't know what the criminal charges would be. At 10,000 per user signed up from their state though, I'd be weary.
Just be careful, I'm just saying it's risky. I can see them ceasing your assets in another state because it follows the current laws. Otherwise if you found someone guilty in a state court you would just move to another state and be fine, which we know doesn't work, or people like the my pillow guy would just move out of Minnesota where he was found guilty, to say Texas.
lol yeah ok buddy
How come plenty federated stuff is also blocking people then? Apparently that alone does not help?
ActivityPub instances can do whatever the hell they want, the point is that no CEO decided who has access to all of it.
Each instance still has an owner. Just like the Bluesky CEO, they need to decide whether the (legal) risks are worth it to them and whether they can cover the (legal) costs if needed.
For any individual instance owner, this changes nothing.
yeah but mastodon has thousands of owners and bluesky has one so its different see