Mississippi Life Law puts decentralized social networks in the test

and Wide -scale life guarantee law in Mississippi It leads to arguments around platforms – Bluesky, Mastodon, or others – offered the best solution to avoid the campaign on Internet freedoms.

The company that manufactures the Bluesky Social application It was announced last week that it would prevent access To serve it in the Mississippi state instead of compliance with the new age verification law. in fortoog The company explained that, as a small team, it lacked the resources necessary to implement the major technical changes required by the law, and it raised concerns about the wide range of the law and the potential effects of privacy.

the law , HB 1126The platforms require a lifetime verification to all users before they can access social networks such as Bluesky. Recently, Supreme Court judges I decided to ban and Emergency Call This would have prevented the law from starting part because the legal challenges facing them were played in the courts. This Bluesky was forced to make its own decision: either compliance or risk of exorbitant fines of up to $ 10,000 per user.

Soon users in Mississippi hurried to an alternative solution, Which tends to involve the use of VPNS.

However, others asked why the VPN was the necessary solution here. After all, decentralized social networks were aimed at reducing the control and power that the state – or any authority – would obtain these social platforms.

On Mastodon, the decentralized social network that runs the Activitypub protocol, founder of Eugen Rocko Respond To advertise from Bluesky by taking a little Potshot on the competing social network.

“This is why real decentralization is important,” he wrote. “No one can decide to prevent Fediiverse Mississippi.”

This paid a response from the founder of Techdirt and Board Board Bluesky Mike Masonic, who said Rochako’s statement was “might be misleading.”

“Because both of them can host their own views of the network,” he pointed out that the largest cases, which they run, are ready to pay the user fines of $ 10,000 in Mississippi? Because the state still follows cases, no? (It refers to the great counterpart, or server, called Mastodon.social, which also works Rocko.)

Techcrunch arrived at Mastodon to confirm whether the law will be compatible with Mastodon.social, and we haven’t heard of publication time. but The law was written somehow It seems that Mastodon’s counterpart may become a target – as it can “let the messaging”, “chat room”, “intended page”, “video channel”, or “main nutrition”, she says.

After that, Rocko and MASNICK participated in a somewhat hot game, where others were subjected, accusing Rochko Bluesky of all its infrastructure run by one American company-in the sense of Bluesky PBC, the company behind the Bluesky social application. He also said that it is “interesting” that this is the only time that someone from Bluzki has said anything about “working together” – that is, to fight such legislation – since Bluesky was launched nearly two years ago.

“Well, I think you have my email address”, Rochko Books.

The truth, as often, lies somewhere in the middle.

Unlike Mastodon, which connects thousands of decentralized servers to Activitypub The protocol, Bluesky uses a different protocol (In the protocol Or in Proto for a short period), which focuses more on the susceptibility of calculation and decentralization. Instead of allowing people to operate their own servers to create a community, Bluesky allows people to run their own versions of pieces and pieces that make up social media infrastructure, such as PDS (personal data server), deportation lists, moderation or algorithms.

However, Bluesky is still the largest entity to run PDS, given that the network is still somewhat new. This means that the majority of Bluesky users depend on their own infrastructure. However, a society called Blacksky Recently weave her PDSTherefore, things are on that front. There are others, in addition to the positions and Appviefs independently, which are parts of Bluesky infrastructure.

Meanwhile, these grass battles do nothing to help Mississippi users who have been closed from their favorite social networks.

Working about the Mississippi mass

Without using VPN, some of the state users a report They managed to reach Bluesky through third -party customers like Gracekiand Dirtand Klearskyand Tuckerand flashOr disturb versions of the Bluesky application, such as Deer or blimp.

Rudi Fraser, border The founder, emphasized Techcrunch that he has community Do not When you prevent any users based on their location, anywhere in the world.

There too refine Release From the available Bluesky, which has been uploaded to the alternative applications distribution platform Altstore. To download Sideload, install Altstore first Mac or Windows While enables the permissions and put the developer. Then press the “+” button, write in “https://smanthasam.github.io/bskyms/alt.json(Without quotations), press the button next to “Blueskyms”, and click on add.

For those in Mississippi, they need a copy of reading only from Bluesky, AnaratiaThe search engine is available.

However, these solutions are not necessarily permanent solutions, as applications and clients must decide themselves whether they want to become a common alternative to users in Mississippi can draw the attention of legislators. As is the case, the law widely affects services that allow users to create profiles, spread content and interact with others in social media – a wide definition.

If the Bluesky customer applications do not run its PDS to host user data, it may be considered only customer – and therefore it should not be affected. But explaining the complications of how PDS works for the judge may also be difficult.

Mississippi is not the only country looking to add a lifetime guarantee layer to the Internet. Other laws are at different stages in Arizonaand Wyomingand South DakotaAnd Virginia. The latter represents a particular challenge, as it includes a time limit for using social media.

In any case, the diaspora is at least social media alternatives to the enforcement of this type of legislation a a little More difficult, compared to a traditional central network like Facebook or Instagram. This is a step in the right direction of decentralization, regardless of your favorite network.

But excessively broad laws also benefit from the largest central platforms, which easily have the resources needed to comply, while smaller services such as Bluesky should only inspect them.