There's a lot of discussion of Mississippi's age verification law for social media today, after Bluesky announced they're blocking the state.
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@Kirk Sigh, I'm not evading… I don't know what else I can tell you.
You said you thought it was open source. I showed you links to GitHub. I said they aren't censoring the entire network, just the official client. You said you wanted proof and to show you how you can view a Bluesky post in Mississippi. I showed you two custom clients that you can access from MS and one of those you can sign up through.
But you are evading. The technicalities you speak of are irrelevant to the topic of censorship. The fact that parts of BlueSky are technically open source, or that other BlueSky apps exist is irrelevant to the people who are functionally denied access to speak due to the decision of a single company. There is no other "instance" we can go sign up on like with ActivityPub apps.
(Here is the part where you say I could technically get all my friends to self-host their own PDS as though it is easy and fun).
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Do you live in Mississippi? Because there's no reason to capitulate otherwise unless you plan on going there on vacation (no reason to do that either).
Doesn't work that way. States agree to enforce each other's civil orders
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Doesn't work that way. States agree to enforce each other's civil orders
incorrect actually
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I'm exhausted with all this. And it's not my fight. The fight belongs to the people of Mississippi. They elected their "leaders."
Until I know for sure that I am not on the hook to pay a $10K penalty for each person on my servers, I've blocked all Mississippi IP addresses from logging in and registering on my Mastodon, Piefed, and Friendica servers.
Wyoming will probably be next.
Entirely understandable. Like you say, it's not your fight. This is more so if one creates something and isn't even from the US, if the wankers in a specific US state elect shitty government, that's not on you in a wholly different country to go up against.
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But I thought BlueSky was open source and decentralized? /s
EDIT: In case it's not obvious (as it apparently isn't to OP) if BlueSky was either of those things then it could not be simply shut down by a CEO.
As evident by Lemmy instances not doing the same thing. /s
There's a difference between being decentralized and doing something illegal, you know?
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"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
How come plenty federated stuff is also blocking people then? Apparently that alone does not help?
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As evident by Lemmy instances not doing the same thing. /s
There's a difference between being decentralized and doing something illegal, you know?
I agree 100%, BlueSky is not decentralized.
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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.
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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
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Other apps can ignore the geoblock. From the Bluesky announcement:
This decision applies only to the Bluesky app, which is one service built on the AT Protocol. Other apps and services may choose to respond differently.
Its cute how they pretend at protocol is being used by anyone not named bluesky
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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.
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You need to explain why a mastodon instance in a state without those laws care what a different state does
Because extradition?
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Its cute how they pretend at protocol is being used by anyone not named bluesky
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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.
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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.
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I agree 100%, BlueSky is not decentralized.
Of course, but whether you're decentralized or not has nothing to do with whether you as someone running a service has to decide for themselves whether to block Mississippi users or risk legal consequences?
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Of course, but whether you're decentralized or not has nothing to do with whether you as someone running a service has to decide for themselves whether to block Mississippi users or risk legal consequences?
Glad we agree that BlueSky is a centralized service.
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It's ignorant how you don't realize that Spark and Blacksky have built their own stacks on AT Protocol.
oh wow.... two
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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?
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Because extradition?
lol yeah ok buddy
