Mississippi's extremely broad age guarantee law has led to debate about which platforms such as Blueski and Mastodon offer the best solution to avoid cracking down on internet freedom.
The company that created the Bluesky social app announced last week that it would block access to services in Mississippi rather than complying with the new age verification law. In a blog post, the company explained that as a small team, it lacked resources to implement the substantial technical changes required by the law, raising concerns about the wide scope of the law and potential privacy implications.
The law, HB 1126, requires a platform that implements age verification for all users before accessing social networks like Bluesky. Recently, a Supreme Court judge decided to block emergency appeals that would have prevented the law from coming into effect as the legal challenges faced in court emerge. This forced BlueSky to make its own decisions. Comply or risk large fines up to $10,000 per user.
Mississippi users quickly scrambled for workarounds that tend to involve using VPNs.
But others have questioned why a VPN is the necessary solution here. After all, decentralized social networking is intended to reduce control and provide electricity to these social platforms by the state or any authority.
Image credit: Screenshots of Mastodon
At Mastodon, a distributed social network running the ActivityPub protocol, founder Eugen Rochko responded to an announcement from Bluesky by taking a little pot shot on his rival social network.
“And this is why true decentralization is important,” he wrote. “No one can make a decision for Fediverse to block Mississippi.”
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This prompted a response from Mike Masnick, founder of TechDirt and executive of Bluesky. Mike Masnick said Rochko's statement was “potentially misleading.”
“Both because others can host their own views of the network,” he pointed out, but would the biggest instance you run would be willing to pay $10,000/user fine in Mississippi? Because nations can still chase instances, right? (He mentions a large instance, or server, called Mastodon.social, which also runs on Rochko.)
TechCrunch contacted Mastodon to see if it complied with the laws regarding Mastodon.social instances, but did not receive a reply at the time of publication. However, the law says that Mastodon instances appear to be targeted, similar to “message boards”, “chat rooms”, “landing pages”, “video channels”, or “main feeds”.
Image credit: Screenshots of Mastodon
Rochko and Masnick engaged in a rather spicy exchange, as others cried out. Rochko accussed that all of the infrastructure of being run by one US company, meaning Bluesky PBC, the company behind the Bluesky Social app. He also said that this was “interesting” when someone from Blueski said something to him about “working together,” that is, the only time that Blueski had been fighting such legislation since it was released almost two years ago.
“Well, I think you have my email address,” writes Rochico.
The truth, as often, is somewhere in the middle.
Unlike Mastodon, which connects thousands of distributed servers via the ActivityPub protocol, BlueSky uses a different protocol (proto for short). Instead of allowing people to run their own servers and create communities, BlueSky can run their own versions that make up their social networking infrastructure, such as PDS (Personal Data Server), relays, moderation lists, algorithms, and more.
That being said, Blueski is the biggest entity operating a PDS, given that the network is still quite new. This means that the majority of Bluesky users rely on their own infrastructure. However, the Blacksky community has recently spun its own PD. So, the situation is progressing in that respect. There are also others where relays and apps, which are part of the Bluesky infrastructure, run independently.
In the meantime, these turf fights do nothing to help Mississippi users who have been locked out of their preferred social networks.
Working around the Mississippi Block
Without using a VPN, some users of state reports were able to access Bluesky through third-party clients such as Graysky, Skeets, Klearsky, Tokimeki, Flashes, or the Freed version of Blueky App.
Blacksky founder Rudy Fraser confirmed with TechCrunch that his community doesn't plan to block users based on where in the world he is.
There is also a sideloaded version of BlueSky, which was uploaded to the Altstore alternative app distribution platform. On Sideload, first install Altstore on your Mac or Windows, and enable permissions and developer mode. Then press the “+” button, type “https://smanthasam.github.io/bskyms/alt.json” (no quotes), press the button next to “blueskyms” and press Add. This will add the source to the Altstore, allowing you to browse and install the sideloaded Bluesky app.
Anartia's search engine is available to Mississippi people who need a read-only version of Bluesky.
Still, these workarounds are not necessarily permanent solutions. This is because apps and client manufacturers will have to decide for themselves whether they risk becoming a popular alternative for Mississippi users who may attract the attention of lawmakers. As it stands, the law broadly affects services that allow users to profile, post content, and interact with others on social networking services. This is a broad definition.
If your BlueSky client application doesn't run its own PD to host user data, it could probably be considered to be serving only the client. Therefore, it should not be affected. However, it may also prove difficult to explain the complexity of how PDS works to judges.
Mississippi is not the only state trying to add an age guarantee layer to the internet. Other laws are in various stages of Arizona, Wyoming, South Dakota and Virginia. The latter is particularly difficult as it includes time limits for social media sites.
In any case, the social networking alternative diaspora makes enforcement of at least this type of law a little more difficult compared to traditionally centralized networks like Facebook and Instagram. This is a step in the right direction of decentralization, regardless of the network you choose.
However, very broad laws favor larger centralized platforms. This has easy resources to comply with, but you only opt out of small services like Bluesky.