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Our Response to Mississippi's Age Assurance Law
- Kye 1y agoAnswer to the obvious question: >> "Mississippi’s new law and the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) are very different. Bluesky follows the OSA in the UK. There, Bluesky is still accessible for everyone, age checks are required only for accessing certain content and features, and Bluesky does not know and does not track which UK users are under 18. Mississippi’s law, by contrast, would block everyone from accessing the site—teens and adults—unless they hand over sensitive information, and once they do, the law in Mississippi requires Bluesky to keep track of which users are children."
- duxup 1y agoI can't find the comic I saw but I can't find that notes how we tell people and kids to not give out personal information on the internet because that's unsafe. Now we demand they give all their information and depending on the situation smile for the camera ...
- WrongOnInternet 1y ago...And also lets make it so they can't encrypt their messages either. Big Brother needs to make sure they aren't sending nudes to people that shouldn't be seeing them.
- ForOldHack 1y agoWait! Wait! Is this the same state that wanted welfare recipients to be tested for drugs and it was found that the drug use by legislators was ten times higher?
- rpdillon 1y ago> That’s why until legal challenges to this law are resolved, we’ve made the difficult decision to block access from Mississippi IP addresses. We know this is disappointing for our users in Mississippi, but we believe this is a necessary measure while the courts review the legal arguments. I strongly agree with this. All these jurisdictions and politicians are passing laws that they don't understand the technical foundations for. Second order effects aren't being considered.
- poly2it 1y agoHow can we be sure they don't understand at this point? They'd really have to be morons, how can they even take care of themselves?
- dhosek 1y agoHave you listened to any legislative debates on technical issues? “A series of tubes” was the high point of political understanding of the internet.
- ForOldHack 1y agoWait! What? The high point was a stunning display of the Dunning-Kruger effect? We should pay John Cheese to call them all personally.
- ToucanLoucan 1y agoHave you seen Congress? It’s like Denny’s on senior appreciation day. They had to wheel McConnell in not long ago because he physically couldn’t walk. And like I don’t mean to shit on the elderly (directly anyway) but I dunno just spitballing here, maybe we could get some folks in there who weren’t born yet when the civil rights act was passed???
- Braxton1980 1y agoWhy would that matter? There are many young members who congress who also support the same things.
- mindslight 1y agoTell me you've never taken care of an elderly person without telling me you've never taken care of an elderly person.
- gmueckl 1y agoSometimes (only sometimes, I promise) I wonder whether this kind of legislation is being dreamt up by a think tank tasked with planning how to implement some ulterior goal (e.g. massively increased surveillance to fight crime - it's far too easy to unsert something more nefarious here). The politicians then just follow the action plan and repeat talking points from party advisors.
- alsetmusic 1y ago> We think this law creates challenges that go beyond its child safety goals, and creates significant barriers that limit free speech and disproportionately harm smaller platforms and emerging technologies. This is the only correct response to such onerous legislation. Every site affected by such over-reach has a moral duty to do the same. Not that I expect them to do so.
- nickff 1y agoIf you think this is bad, you should see the regulatory burden imposed on small manufacturers. This is nothing. The problem is that voters don’t seem to care about regulatory requirements.
- qingcharles 1y agoThe alternate solution is to shutter all US operations and move to another jurisdiction that doesn't require these regulations, in the same way 4chan is ignoring the UK's request. Harder to implement than an IP ban for a state, though.
- jmclnx 1y agoI am curious how many other "social" sites took this stand. I think what bluesky did is the only way to fight these laws that all it will do is be a boon to people who obtain and sell PI. For people in Mississippi, you can always get a VPN. You should avoid Free VPNs, but that is your decision.
- eviks 1y agoThey're not fighting anything, they've given up a part of their business just to be safe.
- mrtesthah 1y agoSo, does Mississippi's age verification also apply to Twitter, Truth Social, Rumble, etc.? Curious what these right-wing platforms are doing about age verification. Surely Mississippi's attorney general will go after those platforms too...
- coldcode 1y agoTruth Social, X and Rumble are all backed by the very people who wrote the law, so will not be sued. Get Out Of Jail Free cards.
- nickthegreek 1y agothe thing about political power is it changes.
- tenpies 1y agoIt does, but almost all the major platforms/companies are members of NetChoice, a trade organization that fights this sort of thing. This presser from Bluesky doesn't mention it, but the case is "NetChoice vs Mississippi", so that's how involved they are to this. Here's their write up on the Mississippi case: https://netchoice.org/netchoice-v-fitch-mississippi/ https://netchoice.org/netchoice-v-fitch-mississippi/ And obligatory Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetChoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetChoice
- stego-tech 1y agoYou’re going to see more of this heavy-handed response, especially from smaller sites or decentralized services. As I’ve argued on past threads about these laws: the internet was neither built nor intended for children. Nobody can get online without some adult intervention (paying for an ISP), and that’s the only age check that’s ever needed. For everything else, it’s up to parents or guardians to implement filters, content controls, and blocks.
- rtkwe 1y agoThere are significant factions who would prefer porn be eradicated in it's entirety and laws like this just use 'protecting children' as the more agreable face to their crusade. Ironically the same people who often crow about parental autonomy and how they should be in complete control of their children's education and lives.
- ForOldHack 1y agoThe hypocrisy is very clearly evident. And there is nothing on Blue sky that is not appropriate for children over 13-with parental guidance. They do need to keep the morons, and knuckle dragging lawyers off the platform simply because of their felonious actions and prison records.
- frumplestlatz 1y ago> And there is nothing on Blue sky that is not appropriate for children over 13-with parental guidance. I've heard that it's full of furry porn and worse. Is that not the case?
- TheCleric 1y agoI wouldn’t say “full of”, but like other mostly uncensored social media sites like Twitter, it’s definitely there if you’re looking for it (and sometimes even when you’re not).
- gjsman-1000 1y ago
- leecoursey 1y agoIs there not some way to route Mississippi's Bluesky traffic through a third party (Cloudflare?, etc.?) that can provide age verification and parental consent as a service, so that it doesn't require every individual online service to implement it separately?
- kayodelycaon 1y agoI don’t think that service exists yet. These laws are very new.
- Kamillaova 1y agojust... why? why contribute to this nonsense?
- Hobadee 1y agoAll arguments about age checks themselves aside, why can BlueSky implement age checks in the UK, but not Mississippi? Seems to me like the only difference would be Mississippi requiring everyone to log in, whereas currently I assume UK requires a login just for age-restricted material. (Although I don't use BlueSky in the UK, so shrugs)
- kayodelycaon 1y agoThe UK only requires verification for specific content. Not the entire site. Also, the identification and tracking requirements are very different.
- Braxton1980 1y agoThey could based on group but you can get around that. Maybe they are concerned that a user using a VPN from Mississippi would cause them to break the law.
- kg 1y agoYes, they explained that the UK's regulations are less aggressive so it's possible to comply with them
- sys_64738 1y agoI'd prefer all businesses impacted by the draconian Brit legislation block the Brits geo completely.
- none_to_remain 1y agoTheir wording had me imagining technological schemes that blind BlueSky from knowing but reading again I think what's going on is: Mississippi: They track "underage" and "adult" UK: They track "unknown [treated as underage]" and "adult"
- radium3d 1y agoWay to blow it, Mississippi
- LadyCailin 1y agoPar for the course for Mississippi.
- herf 1y agoAssuming mobile platforms weigh in with an API sometime, it's notable that the only people allowed online by default would be minors who are using parental controls, because they would be able to prove (a) age and (b) parental consent on day 1.
- djoldman 1y agoI wonder if a business could be successfully sued for denying service to people OVER a certain age. It's interesting that age seems to be a protected class if you're above a certain age and not below.
- lifthrasiir 1y agoThe very notion of underage is necessarily arbitrary because there is no direct way to measure one's maturity and thus sensitivity to such materials. As long as the block is not perpetual and lifted after some reasonable cutoff, such blocks are thought to be reasonable in general (yeah some would complain, of course). In comparison the business you have described is the polar opposite, where people are perpetually blocked once they reach a certain age.
- ForOldHack 1y agoThe only two things I can l'd think of, is driving and article 25 of the constitution. The latter which has been clearly violated to a large extent. There ought to be a licence to be able to run for office, just a multiple choice question. Are you an 1) Idiot? 2) Fascist? 3) Ted Cruz? 4) pedophilic zoophile? And turn just disqualify them.
- AdrianB1 1y agoYes, it is possible to sue for denying service, especially for public utilities. For any specific case a lawyer is needed to check before responding to the question.
- Braxton1980 1y agoReminder Republicans, for many years now, have run on "stop big government regulations" without being specific.
- MostlyStable 1y ago[flagged]
- rjbwork 1y ago[flagged]
- nashashmi 1y agoWe might need a centralized age verification system. A person verifies their age using an app. The app is on the phone of the user and confirms opening new account. Then you have accounts that are age verified and accounts that are not age verified. Age verified accounts have the privilege of seeing sensitive content. Unverified accounts don’t have that privilege. Some might see this as gravitating to bad laws. I see this as an attempt to address a prohibition on doing business.
- t-writescode 1y agoA more appropriate route to that is to create incentives and grants for companies to be created that can accomplish this age verification infrastructure (ideally with its own privacy guarantees, etc), and make a declaration such as “in 5 years, you will be expected to validate and track the age group of all users on your platform. We have created grants to help create technology companies and a platform that will help to implement and privatize this service”. That way you get both: * companies that can provide the service (yay capitalism, middlemen and jobs!) * compliance with the new laws that help to stratify users so that < 18 and > 18 users are identified and segregated.
- nashashmi 1y agoYeah, that should have been part of the bill.
- tzs 1y agoOr do it like the EU is doing with the EU Digital Identity Wallet, which has been tested in pilot programs since 2023, and which is expected to start being deployed to the general public next year. Briefly, your government would give you a signed digital copy of your government ID document. This copy would be cryptographically bound to secure hardware you own, typically your smartphone. I'll assume a smartphone for the rest of this. When you want to reveal some fact from your ID to a site, such as "my ID says that my birthday is at least 18 years in the past", your device and the site use a zero knowledge proof (ZKP) protocol to prove to the site that this is true for the signed digital ID that is bound to your device. Nothing else from or about your digital ID is conveyed to the site. Once this is out it should be pretty easy for sites to implement age checks for EU users. The EU system is all open source and they've got a reference implementation on Github somewhere. Google has also recently released in open source library at https://github.com/google/longfellow-zk https://github.com/google/longfellow-zk for building such systems. The main thing to ensure privacy with these kind of systems is making it so that the entity that issues the digital ID to your device is an entity that you don't mind proving your ID to with your physical government ID. Ideal would be for this to be handled by the same government agency that issues the physical ID. Second best would be entities like banks that you already trust with your ID.
- proteal 1y agoFigured I’d ask the HN crowd- what’s the best way around these geofence blocks? Have you had success with a system that can work smoothly on mobile/desktop without any of the disastrous privacy and performance implications that VPN services are prone to?
- Spivak 1y agoI mean anything that circumvents geo-fencing at the IP level is going to be tunneling your traffic through an address that isn't blocked. Your options are all VPNs, the choice is only who's running it—you via a VPS or similar, friends/family/community, a service as you describe, or the public with Tor. The friends/family option is probably the most broadly effective at circumventing the block since you'll have a residential address but at the cost of a lot of latency and bandwidth. The most performant option will be VPS services but lots of sites will block them as well out of an abundance of caution.
- dboon 1y agoJust use a lightweight, privacy focused VPN like Mullvad. You don’t have to keep it on when you need top network performance. Ultimately, a VPN of SOME kind is the only option.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agoI don’t know how this works: how can Mississippi compel Bluesky to pay these fines for breaking a state regulation if they’re not based in Mississippi?
- TheCleric 1y agoBecause if they have users in Mississippi they are doing “interstate commerce” and a federal court has the ability and jurisdiction to compel them to pay those fines.
- LadyCailin 1y agoAre users, who are not transacting with the platform, doing commerce? What if the platform were hosted in, say, Europe?
- Spivak 1y agoIf they're outside the country they can freely tell Mississippi to pound sand—the state might compel entities they do have jurisdiction over (i.e. ISPs) to cut them off but that's the extent of it.
- ekianjo 1y agoNotice their stance is that they are not against these kind of checks but it costs too much to implement. Basically if it becomes cheap to implement Bsky will be happy to oblige. > Unlike tech giants with vast resources, we’re a small team focused on building decentralized social technology that puts users in control. Age verification systems require substantial infrastructure and developer time investments, complex privacy protections, and ongoing compliance monitoring — costs that can easily overwhelm smaller providers.
- skybrian 1y agoThere's an important hint in the blog post: > This decision applies only to the Bluesky app, which is one service built on the AT Protocol [...] We remain committed to building a protocol that enables openness and choice. If someone else builds another app as a workaround, they aren't going to stop them. (Bluesky isn't decentralized enough in practice yet, but someday...)
- silicon5 1y agoThey're right to point out that laws like this are primarily motivated by government control of speech. On a recent Times article about the UK's Online Safety Act: > Luckily, we don’t have to imagine the scene because the High Court judgment details the last government’s reaction when it discovered this potentially rather large flaw. First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act. They suggested asking Ofcom to think again and the minister agreed. https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/online-safety-act-botched-2xk8xwlps https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/online-s...
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoWyoming and South Dakota seem even worse, having passed laws requiring age verification for sites with anything potentially harmful to minors. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/08/book-bans-internet-bans-wyoming-lets-parents-control-whole-states-access-internet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/08/book-bans-internet-ban... What a shameful era. These fools delegintize the state, delegitimize the legal system. Engaged in absolute foolery. The suggestion I saw was that residents of these states need to comb through every government site they can and sue the government for anything that could be harmful to youth that they find. Theres really no practical limit no possible implementation that the state has allowed other than to age verify pretty much everything; return-to-sender-ing the paper bag of flaming dog shit seems like a semi necessary step here.
- Kamillaova 1y agoI genuinely believe that only such way (regarding "protecting children" from viewing "dangerous/unwanted content") is correct and maximally effective. All others mostly create a theater of security - in other words, they don't actually prevent direct access to "dangerous" content but merely create an illusion of doing so. This ranges from client-side-only checks (like Telegram in the UK) to "privacy-preserving" checks based on ZK or similar technologies, which are currently being promoted in the EU. The first can be bypassed simply by searching for workarounds; the second... well, one person could just verify thousands of others using their own documents, and that's it. Literally a security theater - I hate it, a lot. And my opinion is that we shouldn't support such ways of doing this, meaning we shouldn't implement or comply with them, but rather protest against them. Either undermine their purpose or create a significant appearance of problems. In other words, either spread methods to bypass them, support such efforts in any way possible, or deny access to services (and so on) in jurisdictions where they're banned by inhumane laws. This is, in a way, a very common practice in the field of "copyright" and I sincerely hope it spreads to everyday matters. It's deeply sad that nobody addresses the root problem - only its consequences, meaning they try to "hide unwanted content" instead of making it "non-unwanted." And it's even sadder that so few of those who could actually influence the implementation of such "protections" advocate this approach. Off the top of my head, I can only name Finland as one actively promoting educational programs and similar solutions to this problem.
- eviks 1y ago> The Supreme Court’s recent decision leaves us facing a hard reality: comply with Mississippi’s age assurance law—and make every Mississippi Bluesky user hand over sensitive personal information and undergo age checks to access the site—or risk massive fines. Given that the opinion states that the law is "likely unconstitutional", isn't it too early to give up and block users?
- spauldo 1y agoNot for a small team without the desire or resources to fight it all the way to the supreme court.
- jaredklewis 1y agoVPN providers are going to be making out like bandits with all the new legislation coming out.
- iowemoretohim 1y agoDo they plan to also block the UK and Australia?