Bluesky Finds its Spine: Blocks Mississippi Over Age Verification

It seems that Bluesky went from “that’s the world that we live in” to blocking a region over age verification.

When the UK government came calling to Bluesky to implement horrible age verification laws, the correct move from Bluesky was to tell the UK government to pound sand. Essentially, the move would be to block the UK altogether because it is better to protect your users rather than throw a certain portion of people under the bus. After all, appeasing bullies never works because they will always come back for more. The nuclear option would make clear that platforms will go to bat for their users and that such laws are simply unacceptable and tell government that large web services aren’t going to stand for these shenanigans.

While all of that was the correct move, Bluesky chose not to do that. Instead, they decided to make the spineless move of capitulating to the government bullies and implement age verification like so many other spineless platforms and services. In fact, I warned about precisely this sort of thing at the time:

The worst part is that this is where the problems begin, not end. As long as organizations and companies capitulate to these laws being pushed onto them, that will give critics of free speech even more ammunition to pursue even more horrible laws that make these laws seem tame by comparison.

You give politicians an inch on this file, they’ll take a mile every single time. It’s bad enough that politician’s are pushing these laws in the first place, but it’s even worse that online leaders have decided to go along with it and accept that taking in copious amounts of personal information is just a new accepted norm in doing business.

Those words I wrote last month ended up being prophetic as usual. Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court gave the green light to an even tougher age verification law in Mississippi that requires all users to submit their personal information, not just at the prompting of the presence of “pornographic” or “harmful” content. The push follows a similar move from Australia which is demanding that all youth be banned from social media regardless of the content. As a result, this is not an isolated incident, but a trend that can only get more prominent as time ticks by.

So, to the surprise of no one, it seems that Mississippi is demanding that platforms like Bluesky implement their version of age verification. We are no longer at the nose being in the tent, we are at the camels head. This apparently was finally the jolt Bluesky needed to realize that capitulation to the earlier demands wasn’t the end of the story, but the beginning. In response, they finally did what they should’ve done in the UK case – block users in the jurisdiction until they learn to behave. From Bluesky:

Keeping children safe online is a core priority for Bluesky. We’ve invested a lot of time and resources building moderation tools and other infrastructure to protect the youngest members of our community. We’re also aware of the tradeoffs that come with managing an online platform. Our mission is to build an open and decentralized protocol for public conversation, and we believe in empowering users with more choices and control over their experience. We work with regulators around the world on child safety—for example, Bluesky follows the UK’s Online Safety Act, where age checks are required only for specific content and features.

Mississippi’s approach would fundamentally change how users access Bluesky. 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. The law would also require us to identify and track which users are children, unlike our approach in other regions. 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.

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. This dynamic entrenches existing big tech platforms while stifling the innovation and competition that benefits users.

We believe effective child safety policies should be carefully tailored to address real harms, without creating huge obstacles for smaller providers and resulting in negative consequences for free expression. 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.

Like I already said, Bluesky should’ve made this move when the UK came knocking. Instead, Bluesky established the precedent that the government can demand the site collect vast swaths of personal information of at least some of its users. Now, here we are today where government is demanding more – specifically, information on all of its users. Capitulating to the UK was a very obvious mistake on Bluesky’s part and people like Mike Masnick should’ve known better here. Yet, here we are with things progressively getting worse.

The good news, however, is that Bluesky is finally doing the right thing. At this point, it is now possible that censorship and surveillance damage to slow down as at least one platform chose resistance. Hopefully, other platforms and services follow suit, but that remains to be seen.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.