Mastodon cannot comply with Mississippi's age verification law because the platform lacks the means to verify users' ages. Mastodon gGmbH explains the service does not track users, which makes enforcement difficult. The nonprofit rejects IP address-based blocking because such measures would unfairly affect traveling users. The fediverse's decentralized architecture prevents a single entity from blocking an entire state. Mastodon servers can set a minimum signup age (mastodon.social sets 16), and Mastodon 4.4 added options for minimum age and legal handling, but the platform still lacks built-in age verification mechanisms.
Decentralized social network Mastodon says it can't comply with Mississippi's age verification law - the same law that saw rival Bluesky pull out of the state - because it doesn't have the means to do so. The social non-profit explains that Mastodon doesn't track its users, which makes it difficult to enforce such legislation. Nor does it want to use IP address-based blocks, as those would unfairly impact people who were traveling, it says.
The statement follows a lively back-and-forth conversation earlier this week between Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko and Bluesky board member and journalist Mike Masnick. In the conversation, published on their respective social networks, Rochko claimed, "there is nobody that can decide for the fediverse to block Mississippi." (The Fediverse is the decentralized social network that includes Mastodon and other services, and is powered by the ActivityPub protocol.) "And this is why real decentralization matters," said Rochko.
On Friday, however, the non-profit shared a statement with TechCrunch to clarify its position, saying that while Mastodon's own servers specify a minimum age of 16 to sign up for its services, it does not "have the means to apply age verification" to its services. That is, the Mastodon software doesn't support it.
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