Decentralized social network Mastodon says it cannot comply with age verification laws, like in Mississippi and elsewhere, and says it's up to individual server owners to decide.

Mastodon, the decentralized social network, stated it cannot comply with age verification laws like Mississippi’s recent legislation because it lacks the technical capability to do so[1]. While Mastodon’s software allows server administrators to specify a minimum age of 16 for sign-ups, the age-check data is not stored, and the nonprofit has no way to verify users’ ages[1:1].

The organization emphasizes that individual server owners must decide for themselves whether to implement age verification, noting that Mastodon was founded specifically “to allow different jurisdictions to have social media that is independent of the U.S.”[1:2]

This stance follows Bluesky’s decision to block service in Mississippi over similar age verification requirements[1:3]. Mastodon’s position highlights the unique challenges decentralized platforms face with regional compliance, as there is “nobody that can decide for the fediverse to block Mississippi,” according to Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko[1:4].

  1. TechCrunch - Mastodon says it doesn’t ‘have the means’ to comply with age verification laws ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  • JamesBoeing737MAX@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1·
    24 days ago

    Why do you think everyone wants to use age verification. To rectrict us to only corporate media and to stop the little online anonymity and privacy we have left.

  • FuckBigTech347@lemmygrad.ml
    1·
    25 days ago

    It’s so funny to me how they always word it as if they’re a corporate entity or some sort of “competitor” on “the market” when in reality it’s just an implementation of a common protocol. I have yet to see other ActivityPub Projects being acknowledged by journalists. Focusing only on Mastodon is like focusing only on Gmail while completely ignoring the existence of E-Mail.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
      1·
      25 days ago

      I don’t think they actually understand that Mastodon is a network in a traditional sense that works the way the internet was meant to operate before the corporate takeover. People have been so conditioned that the internet is just 5 corps in a trench coat, that they don’t have the cognitive tools to engage with something like the fediverse.

      • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        25 days ago

        Also, they dumb it down in order to make it readable for the widest possible audience so they get the highest possible revenue.

        IDK if it’s just me growing up but I swear news from when I was a kid was more technically worded than now. We literally used news articles in school to learn technical words. Now they’re so patronizing.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
          1·
          25 days ago

          Oh for sure, I find most tech news articles are just painful to read nowadays. I also distinctly remember this was not the case before.

      • warm@kbin.earth
        0·
        25 days ago

        I think they would implode if we went back to signing up to multiple different forums. The internet is just a vastly different place than it was 20 years ago. It’s very consolidated now and that sucks.