Mastodon Says It Doesn’t ‘have The Means’ To Comply With Age Verification Laws

Decentralized societal web Mastodon says it can’t comply pinch Mississippi’s property verification law — nan aforesaid rule that saw rival Bluesky propulsion retired of nan state — because it doesn’t person nan intends to do so.

The societal non-profit explains that Mastodon doesn’t way its users, which makes it difficult to enforce specified legislation. Nor does it want to usage IP address-based blocks, arsenic those would unfairly effect group who were traveling, it says.

The connection follows a lively back-and-forth speech earlier this week between Mastodon laminitis and CEO Eugen Rochko and Bluesky committee personnel and journalist Mike Masnick. In nan conversation, published connected their respective societal networks, Rochko claimed, “there is cipher that tin determine for nan fediverse to artifact Mississippi.” (The Fediverse is nan decentralized societal network that includes Mastodon and different services, and is powered by nan ActivityPub protocol.)

“And this is why existent decentralization matters,” said Rochko.

Masnick pushed back, questioning why Mastodon’s individual servers, for illustration nan 1 Rochko runs astatine mastodon.social, would not besides beryllium taxable to nan aforesaid $10,000 per personification fines for noncompliance pinch nan law.

At the clip of our reporting connected this exchange, Mastodon gGmbH, nan community-funded non-profit organization, didn’t respond to a petition for comment.

On Friday, however, nan non-profit shared a connection pinch TechCrunch to explain its position, saying that while Mastodon’s ain servers specify a minimum property of 16 to motion up for its services, it does not “have nan intends to use property verification” to its services.

That is, nan Mastodon package doesn’t support it. The Mastodon 4.4 release successful July 2025 added nan expertise to specify a minimum property for sign-up and different ineligible features for handling position of service, partially successful consequence to accrued regularisation astir these areas. The caller characteristic allows server administrators to cheque users’ ages during sign-up, but nan property cheque information is not stored.

That intends individual server owners person to determine for themselves if they judge an property verification constituent is simply a basal addition.

The non-profit says Mastodon is presently incapable to supply “direct aliases operational assistance” to nan broader group of Mastodon server operators. Instead, it encourages owners of Mastodon and different Fediverse servers to make usage of resources disposable online, specified arsenic nan IFTAS library, which provides spot and information support for unpaid societal web moderators. The non-profit besides advises server admins to observe nan laws of nan jurisdictions wherever they are located and operate.

Mastodon notes that it’s “not tracking, aliases capable to remark on, nan policies and operations of individual servers that tally Mastodon.”

“One of nan reasons Mastodon was founded was to let different jurisdictions to person societal media that is independent of nan U.S.,” per nan connection shared pinch TechCrunch. “People are free to take to person their relationship connected a Mastodon server whose policies meet their needs.”