The decentralized social network Mastodon has stated it cannot comply with the new age verification law in Mississippi. This is the same legislation that caused its rival, Bluesky, to pull out of the state. Mastodon explains that its fundamental design makes compliance impossible, as the network does not track its users, which is necessary to enforce such a law.
The non-profit organization further clarified that it does not wish to implement IP address-based blocks as a solution. It believes this method would unfairly impact people who are merely traveling through the state.
This official statement follows a public conversation between Mastodon’s founder, Eugen Rochko, and Bluesky board member Mike Masnick. In their exchange, Rochko argued that no single entity can decide to block an entire state on the decentralized Fediverse network, which includes Mastodon and other services. He stated this is a key example of why real decentralization matters. Masnick countered by questioning why individual Mastodon servers would not be subject to the law’s fines for noncompliance.
Mastodon GmbH, the community-funded non-profit, has now clarified its position. While its own servers require users to be at least 16 years old to sign up, the organization says it does not have the means to apply age verification to its services. The underlying Mastodon software does not support it.
A recent software update did add the ability for server administrators to set a minimum age during sign-up. However, the age check data is not stored. This means each individual server owner must decide for themselves whether to add an age verification component.
The non-profit says it is unable to provide direct assistance to the many independent server operators. Instead, it encourages them to use online resources for trust and safety support. Mastodon advises server administrators to observe the laws of their own jurisdictions.
Finally, Mastodon emphasized that it does not track or comment on the policies of individual servers. The organization noted that one of the reasons Mastodon was founded was to allow different jurisdictions to have social media independent of the United States, giving people the freedom to choose a server whose policies meet their needs.