There’s a lot of discussion of Mississippi’s age verification law for social media today, after Bluesky announced they’re blocking the state.
Note that Mississippi’s requirements go far beyond the Online Safety Act, MIssissippi’s law, HB 1126, requires age verification for all users, and parental consent for users under 18., no matter what the content of the site is. Last week the US Supreme Court declined to block the law while it’s being challenged in the courts, even though Kavanaugh described it as “likely unconstitutional”.
The law clearly should be found unconstitutional - the amicus brief from @CenDemTech, @eff et al discusses why. Still, with the current Supreme Court, who knows; they just the (somewhat narrower) Texas age verification law also should have been found unconstitutional, but SCOTUS said it was okay. So who knows. And of course this is exactly the kind of chilling effect they’re aiming for, which is why it’s so disappointing that SCOTUS didn’t block its enforcement until the case is heard.
As far as I know there isn’t any guidance yet for people running fedi instances (or message boards, which are also covered). If you’re running a US-based fedi instance, it’s might well be worth talking to your lawyer about this. Here’s the legislation, and here’s the langauge from Section 4 (1)
“A digital service provider may not enter into an agreement with a person to create an account with a digital service unless the person has registered the person’s age with the digital service provider. A digital service provider shall make commercially reasonable efforts to verify the age of the person creating an account with a level of certainty appropriate to the risks that arise from the information management practices of the digital service provider.”
You need to explain why a mastodon instance in a state without those laws care what a different state does
I don’t need to explain anything. If you want to host something with content that is illegal in another state and you choose to not put up any protections to block users from accessing the content in that state, you very well may be sued some day. If you block users from signing up from those states and/or block those IP addresses from accessing your site, you likely would have grounds for it to be dismissed before ever having to do anything. State lines do not protect you against lawsuits.
Yeah, don’t listen to anybody who says “they can’t fine me or sue me if I’m in a different state” or “they can’t do anything about it if they win.” Of course we don’t know who they’ll target when they start enforcing the law, and it’s possible that the law will be found unconstitutional … still, they can fine you, and they can sue, so if you decide not to geoblock them yet make sure you’re thinking through the risks.
I haven’t seen anything yet on how strong a defense geoblocking Mississippi will be in practice. Bluesky obviously thinks it puts them in a stronger position than not geoblocking, but at this point we really don’t know.
@Kirk
@LifeInMultipleChoice
Because extradition?