Social networking startup Bluesky has decided to block access to Mississippi services rather than complying with the new age guarantee law.
In a blog post published Friday, the company explained that as a small team, they lacked the resources to make the substantial technical changes required by this type of law, raising concerns about the widespread scope of the law and its privacy implications.
Mississippi's HB 1126 requires a platform that introduces age verification for all users before accessing social networks such as Bluesky. On Thursday, a US Supreme Court judge decided to block emergency appeals that would prevent the law from coming into effect as legal challenges arise in court.
As a result, Bluesky had to decide what to do about compliance.
Instead of requiring users to verify their age before accessing age-restricted content, the law requires age verification for all users. This means that Bluesky must verify the age of all users and obtain parental consent from people under the age of 18. The company also has a potential penalty for non-compliance violations of up to $10,000 per user.
Bruski also emphasizes that the law goes beyond child safety as intended, “it creates important barriers that limit freedom of speech and disproportionately harm small platforms and emerging technologies.”
To comply, in addition to detailed tracking of minors, you must also collect and store sensitive information from all users. This is different from the methods that are expected to comply with other age verification laws, such as the UK Online Safety Act (OSA), which requires age checks only for specific content and features.
Mississippi law blocks anyone from using the site unless they provide personal and sensitive information.
“Unlike the tech giants with huge resources, we are a small team focused on building decentralized social technologies that control our users,” read the company's blog post. “Age verification systems require significant infrastructure and developer time investments, complex privacy protection, and ongoing compliance monitoring – costs that easily overwhelm small providers.
Some Bluesky users outside of Mississippi then reported issues accessing services for mobile phone providers route phones through servers in the state, with CTO Paul Frazee replied on Saturday that “the company is rolling out location detection updates that say it “hopes to resolve some inaccuracies.”
The company's blog post points out that the decision only applies to Bluesky apps built on the AT protocol. Other apps may approach decisions differently.
This post was updated to reflect issues with users other than the Mississippi and Blueski answers.
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