Decentralized social network Mastodon says it can’t comply with Mississippi’s age verification law — the same law that saw rival Bluesky pull out of the state — because it doesn’t have the means to do so.
The social non-profit explains that Mastodon doesn’t track its users, which makes it difficult to enforce such legislation. Nor does it want to use IP address-based blocks, as those would unfairly impact people who were traveling, it says.
<insert number of Mastodon instances> * 10,000
Some lawyer on Capitol Hill: “Hmm…”
Not if, when.
Who knows, the same demand may be given of certain other federated social media sites in a few months.