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Bluesky has walked off the stage in the birthplace of the blues rather than comply with a new Mississippi law that the social network says would have required it to verify the age of every user in the state.
“Mississippi’s approach would fundamentally change how users access Bluesky,” the decentralized platform announced in a post Friday afternoon, eight days after the Supreme Court declined the tech-advocacy group NetChoice’s request to block that statute requiring social sites to verify the ages of new users.
“The Supreme Court’s recent decision leaves us facing a hard reality: comply 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,” the post read. “The law would also require us to identify and track which users are children, unlike our approach in other regions.”
The law, H.B. 1126, passed with nearly unanimous votes in Mississippi’s state House and Senate and then signed into law by Gov. Tate Reeves (R) in 2024, requires social platforms to verify the ages of all users when they create an account.
Any would-be user under 18 must show the consent of a parent or guardian, after which a social platform has to limit that minor’s access to a wide variety of content deemed harmful.
The statute’s text applies to any site that connects people “in a manner that allows users to socially interact with other users,” aside from an exception for platforms built to provide users “with access to career development opportunities” (think LinkedIn).
The bill’s full title, the “Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act,” refers to a horrible incident of catfishing in 2022: 16-year-old Walker Montgomery fell prey to a sextortion scam on Instagram and died by suicide that night. At the end of 2022, the FBI reported that at least 3,000 underage victims, mostly boys, had been conned by these lies, with more than a dozen suicide deaths resulting.
The law’s provisions are vague in many aspects. Covered platforms must make “commercially reasonable efforts to verify the age of the person creating an account” and then obtain evidence of consent by a minor’s parent or guardian through such means as a signed form, a phone or video call, or collecting and then deleting an image of a parent or guardian’s government-issued ID.
Social platforms then must “make commercially reasonable efforts” to “prevent or mitigate the known minor’s exposure to harmful material.” It defines that broadly as “self-harm, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and suicidal behaviors,” encouraging substance abuse or illegal drug use, online or real-world harassment, sexual exploitation, and inciting violence or promoting “other illegal activity.”
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But platforms don’t have to do anything to stop underage users from “deliberately and independently searching for, or specifically requesting, content” along those lines.
Contrary to Bluesky’s post, H.B. 1126 does not require platforms to verify the ages of existing users, although its harmful-material provisions do apply to any “known minor” on a social site.
Citing potential fines of up to $10,000 a user and Bluesky’s small resources compared to its centralized social giants it’s competing with (and which have yet to announce their own exits from Mississippi), the post says Bluesky will now block devices with IP addresses that it detects as being inside Mississippi.
“This block will remain in place while the courts decide whether the law will stand,” the post says.
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This is an app-specific block, not a platform-wide one: Bluesky’s decentralized foundation means that other apps built on its AT Protocol can choose to stay open to Mississippi users. Bluesky users can also use VPN services–some free–to appear to connect from elsewhere in the world.
Mississippi’s law goes far beyond the growing set of state laws that require porn sites to verify that their users are at least 18 years old–and which the Supreme Court approved in a July opinion upholding a Texas statute.
Bluesky’s post also portrays the state law in a different light from the UK’s Online Safety Act, which requires platforms to verify that users are over 18 before displaying porn or other “harmful” content. The company is complying with that requirement, including restricting its direct-messaging option to adult users.
The Mississippi law may yet get a hearing in the Supreme Court. While the court’s decision allowing H.B. 1126 to go into effect did not come with an explanation, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion (PDF) that suggested the state law will not survive constitutional scrutiny.
“To be clear, NetChoice has, in my view, demonstrated that it is likely to succeed on the merits—namely, that enforcement of the Mississippi law would likely violate its members’ First Amendment rights under this Court’s precedents,” he wrote before citing the court’s opinion on the Texas law and two earlier opinions. “In short, under this Court’s case law as it currently stands, the Mississippi law is likely unconstitutional.”
If you feel yourself in crisis, call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. The world is better with you in it.
About Rob Pegoraro
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