The latest moral panic sweeping the country (and parts of the world): age verification laws. Supposedly, by requiring valid state ID (or in a few places, facial verification) to access various websites with adult content (or content that can be interpreted as “adult”), youth will be protected from the worst aspects of the internet. The biggest recent usage of such laws is in the United Kingdom, where its recently implemented age verification law is wreaking havoc. Among other consequences, VPN usage has skyrocketed in the UK.
Stateside, some states have passed similar age verification laws. Mississippi has passed a law requiring social networks to verify and track users’ ages. While the Supreme Court’s waffled (for now) on declaring this law unconstitutional, it’s still problematic. To quote PC Mag:
The Mississippi law says that social media sites must verify the ages of new users and obtain parental consent before allowing kids under 18 to make an account. The sites must also “make commercially reasonable efforts to develop and implement a strategy” that insulates known minors from harmful material and behavior, such as online bullying, sexual exploitation, or anything that may encourage substance abuse.
The law exempts a number of services, including those whose primary function is to provide access to “online video games,” so Steam is likely unaffected—but you can bet that Valve and every other big gaming company is closely watching the development of internet age verification laws in the US, UK, and elsewhere.
The first social network affected by this law is Bluesky, who states as of yesterday, they’ve started blocking Mississippi IP addresses. They state they don’t have the resources or willingness to perform such age verification, so it’s easier to just shut off access to the Magnolia State. Bluesky does comply with the UK age verification law, stating that law has narrower demands than Mississippi’s.
Bluesky notes this blocking just applies to their app/default server, not others based on the AT Protocol. However, the uptake on apps/servers using AT Protocol has been relatively low. Bluesky’s default server (where nearly its entire base lies) is why signing up for and using Bluesky is “easy,” versus complaints about Mastodon’s federated nature being too hard to use/understand.
Age verification laws suck for numerous reasons:
- They’re a privacy and security nightmare. I’m supposed to hand my driver’s license to a random website just to read its content? Even if a third party’s used, there’s been too many data security breaches to count by this point.
- They undermine some of the idea of an “open web.”
- The reliance on AI to verify age (via facial recognition), which YouTube has started using, could lead to other problems. What if YouTube decides (despite my Google account’s age) I’m a kid since I use YouTube to watch a number of cartoons?
- What’s considered “adult” may be subjective. Given the moral panic nature of said laws and that some conservatives equate anything LGBTQ with “adult”, said laws will certainly be used as an excuse to punch down at LGBTQ people, both adults and youth. The UK’s recent aggressive increase in transphobic laws and other hostile policies has earned it the nickname “TERF Island,” and Mississippi’s anything but LGBTQ-friendly. I can see something like the Trevor Project deemed “adult,” especially under a presidential administration that stripped funding for said project’s LGBTQ suicide prevention hotline.
As for Bluesky, I can see why they cut off Mississippi; as they said, they don’t have the resources to run age verification, and they also might not have the resources to extensively fight this in court. Still, it doesn’t look good from a publicity standpoint, and sets a bad precedent. While VPNs are an option, some worry about just relying on VPNs “normalizing” age verification laws.
I don’t think this spells “doom” for Bluesky; for that, I’d be more concerned about its unclear business model. However, for those concerned about Bluesky and/or age verification laws, a few options I suggest:
- Consider using a VPN; Mullvad is a decent one. Don’t use a free VPN, which will inevitably be selling off your user data.
- Don’t make Bluesky your only online presence. If you’re a creator of any sort, you should have your own blog/website, which will always be yours. As for social networks, having a backup to Bluesky is worthwhile, even though there aren’t many alternatives at this point that aren’t owned by billionaires. Mastodon is one option for a Twitter-like service; it’s based on a federated model running on ActivityPub, and thus has a less centralized setup versus Twitter or Facebook. While Mastodon fumbled their initial attempt to lure away Twitter users, it’s tried making a few changes to be more user-friendly (sending new users to a default server a la Bluesky’s sign-up, etc.). Another Fediverse app is Pixelfed, which is basically the ActivityPub version of Instagram.
Image: Bluesky
