Bluesky has blocked access in Mississippi, citing privacy and free speech concerns over a new law requiring all social media users to undergo age verification with fines of up to $10,000 per violation.
The problem isn’t that the state is blocking it; its that they threatened to impose a $10,000 fine for each user who can access the site without first proving their age.
You can afford that risk if you live outside the US. Not if you’re a US corporation
Something I do wonder about these laws: could a person self-hosting a private fedi instance that only they have an account on, argue that they meet age verification requirements by virtue of personally knowing the age of the only user? Or at that point would the whole network of federated servers count as the “platform” rather than the instance?
this doesn’t kill the fediverse. mississippi can’t do shit to you if you aren’t in mississippi unless the state you’re in agrees to cooperate with them. and that’s only after they subpoena your hosting provider, which might not even cooperate with them at all if they are outside US jurisdiction. and if you go through cloudflare? that’s another subpeona from a corporation that doesn’t like revealing information about their users and has gone to federal court on many occasions to fight both state and federal governments.
any state that doesn’t have one of these laws on the books is unlikely to decide to extradite you for something that isn’t illegal where you live, especially since it’s not a criminal charge.
Its probably more difficult to block multiple mastodon instances than the single bluesky site.
The problem isn’t that the state is blocking it; its that they threatened to impose a $10,000 fine for each user who can access the site without first proving their age.
You can afford that risk if you live outside the US. Not if you’re a US corporation
If a minor hosted their own instance for friends, would the state fine them $10,000/pop?
I assume the hoster would know the age of his friends? Or is the law more spesific in how the verification must happen.
Something I do wonder about these laws: could a person self-hosting a private fedi instance that only they have an account on, argue that they meet age verification requirements by virtue of personally knowing the age of the only user? Or at that point would the whole network of federated servers count as the “platform” rather than the instance?
This kills the fediverse.
this doesn’t kill the fediverse. mississippi can’t do shit to you if you aren’t in mississippi unless the state you’re in agrees to cooperate with them. and that’s only after they subpoena your hosting provider, which might not even cooperate with them at all if they are outside US jurisdiction. and if you go through cloudflare? that’s another subpeona from a corporation that doesn’t like revealing information about their users and has gone to federal court on many occasions to fight both state and federal governments.
any state that doesn’t have one of these laws on the books is unlikely to decide to extradite you for something that isn’t illegal where you live, especially since it’s not a criminal charge.
Yes