Bluesky Blocking Miss. Users Highlights Issues With Age-Verification Laws, Say Critics

David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said that his initial reaction to the announcement was mixed, as he was “angry that it had to happen,” but “pleased that Bluesky was pushing back some.”

“We've been fighting against these age mandates for a long time now, and so it's really disappointing to see them get rolled out, especially when the issue is still being litigated in the courts,” he said in an interview.

Paul Taske, co-director of NetChoice’s Litigation Center, noted on X Friday that the Mississippi law is only in effect because the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paused NetChoice’s injunction on the law (see 2504180013) .

“Websites aren't willing to risk the penalties -- especially new entrants or smaller players,” he said. “These laws undeniably have a chilling effect on speech. Users in Mississippi can no longer use the service below.”

“Mississippi's law is unconstitutional, and we look forward to seeing it struck down,” Taske added.

Announcing its decision on Friday, Bluesky said that “Mississippi's approach would fundamentally change how users access” the social media platform. It said it had to choose between “comply[ing] with Mississippi’s age assurance law -- and make every Mississippi Bluesky user hand over sensitive personal information and undergo age checks to access the site -- or risk massive fines.”

However, Bluesky noted that it complies with the U.K. Online Safety Act, (see 2507100067) since “age checks are required only for specific content and features.”

Greene said that “the difference with Mississippi is that the law is being litigated, and what Bluesky would be required to do … would be to expend resources and money and time to roll out a system that still may be declared … illegal, and so they didn't want to do something on a temporary basis.”

“I would have loved [for] Bluesky to take up the position in the U.K. that they couldn't [comply] and either challenge the law or cut users off there,” he added. “But my understanding is that the difference is that it's not easy to comply with the [Mississippi] law, to install these systems … and that to do so on a temporary basis would be impossible or just too expensive for them.”

In terms of whether Bluesky’s announcement will cause other companies to follow, Greene said he hopes other companies become “actually very public about how and whether they're going to comply with the law.”

When “internet users actually have to deal with these systems,” they're found to be “very frustrating and people don't like them,” he added. “I would hope that whatever was happening was happening up front, where people understood” it.

"We are already seeing digital services providers leave Mississippi and this is not unexpected,” said Megan Stokes, state director at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, in an email to Privacy Daily.

“The cost of complying with age verification is not just about redesigning login pages but it comes with creating privacy frameworks for collecting and verifying the data, verifying family relationships to allow for parental consent, implementing new content filters and moderation, and possibly bringing in third party verifiers or compliance teams,” she said. “The definitions in this bill are so broad that they capture not just companies that are considered social media but almost any website that allows for a user to create a profile and ask a question on a message board."

Greene said “there's a gazillion reasons why states should not be passing these laws,” including the poor rollout in the U.K. He hopes that legislatures are “thinking about how this really degrades the user experience … how it closes what's otherwise [a] free and open Internet [that] everyone has enjoyed up until this point, the threats to user privacy, [like] losing the ability to use online services pseudonymously, or at least not directly disclosing their identity, threats to freedom of expression” and “trying to block even adults access to material they have a legal right to access.”

Australian women's rights organization Manushya called age gating laws “a tool for mass surveillance” in a statement Thursday.

“Recent discussions surrounding age gating have danced around the ideas that such laws can be made compatible with human rights,” said Jean Linis-Dinco, digital rights advisor at Manushya. “We reject this premise without reservations and push back on the creeping defeatism within the civil society space that treats the passage or debate of these laws as an attestation of their inevitiability.”

“The main principle in age gating policies that frames children as innocent, apolitical and pure is only reserved for children from affluent families who can buy their way to privacy and justice,” she added. “Children from working class, racialized and migrant backgrounds are never guaranteed the same innocence.”