Decentralized social community Mastodon says it could actually’t adjust to Mississippi’s age verification legislation — the identical legislation that noticed rival Bluesky pull out of the state — as a result of it doesn’t have the means to take action.
The social non-profit explains that Mastodon doesn’t observe its customers, which makes it tough to implement such laws. Nor does it wish to use IP address-based blocks, as these would unfairly impression individuals who had been touring, it says.
The assertion follows a full of life back-and-forth dialog earlier this week between Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko and Bluesky board member and journalist Mike Masnick. Within the dialog, printed on their respective social networks, Rochko claimed, “there’s no person that may determine for the fediverse to dam Mississippi.” (The Fediverse is the decentralized social community that features Mastodon and different providers, and is powered by the ActivityPub protocol.)
“And that is why actual decentralization issues,” stated Rochko.
Masnick pushed again, questioning why Mastodon’s particular person servers, just like the one Rochko runs at mastodon.social, wouldn’t even be topic to the identical $10,000 per person fines for noncompliance with the legislation.
At the time of our reporting on this alternate, Mastodon gGmbH, the community-funded non-profit group, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
On Friday, nonetheless, the non-profit shared an announcement with TechCrunch to make clear its place, saying that whereas Mastodon’s personal servers specify a minimal age of 16 to join its providers, it doesn’t “have the means to use age verification” to its providers.
That’s, the Mastodon software program doesn’t help it. The Mastodon 4.4 launch in July 2025 added the power to specify a minimal age for sign-up and different authorized options for dealing with phrases of service, partly in response to elevated regulation round these areas. The brand new function permits server directors to verify customers’ ages throughout sign-up, however the age verify information shouldn’t be saved.
Meaning particular person server house owners should determine for themselves in the event that they consider an age verification element is a obligatory addition.
The non-profit says Mastodon is at present unable to offer “direct or operational help” to the broader set of Mastodon server operators. As an alternative, it encourages house owners of Mastodon and different Fediverse servers to utilize assets out there on-line, such because the IFTAS library, which supplies belief and security help for volunteer social community moderators. The non-profit additionally advises server admins to look at the legal guidelines of the jurisdictions the place they’re positioned and function.
Mastodon notes that it’s “not monitoring, or in a position to touch upon, the insurance policies and operations of particular person servers that run Mastodon.”
“One of many causes Mastodon was based was to permit totally different jurisdictions to have social media that’s unbiased of the U.S.,” per the assertion shared with TechCrunch. “Individuals are free to decide on to have their account on a Mastodon server whose insurance policies meet their wants.”
