Decentralized social community Mastodon says it will probably’t adjust to Mississippi’s age verification regulation — the identical regulation that noticed rival Bluesky pull out of the state — as a result of it doesn’t have the means to take action.
The social nonprofit explains that Mastodon doesn’t observe its customers, which makes it tough to implement such laws. Nor does it need to use IP address-based blocks, as these would unfairly affect individuals who have been touring, it says.
The assertion follows a vigorous 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, revealed 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 this is the reason actual decentralization issues,” mentioned 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 consumer fines for noncompliance with the regulation.
On the time of our reporting on this alternate, Mastodon gGmbH, the community-funded nonprofit group, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
On Friday, nevertheless, the nonprofit shared a press release with TechCrunch to make clear its place, saying that whereas Mastodon’s personal servers specify a minimal age of 16 to enroll in 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 flexibility 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 examine customers’ ages throughout sign-up, however the age-check information is just not saved.
Which means particular person server homeowners must determine for themselves in the event that they consider an age verification part is a vital addition.
The nonprofit 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 homeowners of Mastodon and different Fediverse servers to utilize sources out there on-line, such because the IFTAS library, which gives belief and security help for volunteer social community moderators. The nonprofit additionally advises server admins to watch 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 completely different jurisdictions to have social media that’s unbiased of the U.S.,” per the assertion shared with TechCrunch. “Persons are free to decide on to have their account on a Mastodon server whose insurance policies meet their wants.”
