Comment on Mississippi Age Verification Law
oliver@lemmy.pifferi.io 7 months ago
“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.!
bsky.social/…/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.
You need to explain why a mastodon instance in a state without those laws care what a different state does
Because extradition?
lol yeah ok buddy
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.
they literally do? what do you think state lines even do?
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.
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.
Carighan@piefed.world 7 months ago
How come plenty federated stuff is also blocking people then? Apparently that alone does not help?
Kirk@startrek.website 7 months ago
ActivityPub instances can do whatever the hell they want, the point is that no CEO decided who has access to all of it.
Carighan@piefed.world 7 months ago
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.
Kirk@startrek.website 7 months ago
yeah but mastodon has thousands of owners and bluesky has one so its different see