I'm a bit confused about some of the discourse around Bluesky having to comply with Mississippi laws.

Does it really matter to what degree they're "truly" decentralized?

Forums and fediverse servers have shut down/geo-blocked people in UK in response to UK's Online Safety Act.

https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/

I figured it's mostly fediverse servers being too small that helps them avoid having to comply. Anyone talking about how this affects mastodon.social?

#AgeVerification #Mississippi #MississippiAgeVerification #bluesky #fediverse

@stefan

here's one take. I wish we had something like a regular public conversation between experts on the protocols.

https://toot.now/@tyzbit/statuses/01K3AHJNQKXSC9QPGNNYY1CB6M

@wjmaggos To be fair, people have already been able to host all the different parts of the Bluesky infrastructure themselves, but putting that aside, this response from Mastodon's CEO seems to suggest what I said earlier, that fediverse admins just assume that they can fly under the radar, regardless of how big or how well federated their community is.

https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/115074631868019158

@stefan

I guess I don't get how laws can work this way. That you can set up a server in one jurisdiction and some other jurisdiction can sue you as soon as they pass a law that providing access to some digital content is illegal.

@wjmaggos I'm not too sure about this Mississippi law, but I believe the UK one applied to services that have users located in the UK, hence geoblocking being utilized. If nobody from the UK can access your service, then you don't need to check their ID.

@stefan

but why does your service have to keep their residents off of it?

the Mississippi government should only be able to regulate the people of Mississippi. perhaps they should talk to the ISPs in Mississippi and force them to stop providing a connection to "bad content".

the current approach will become tyranny over those with little money for lawyers by the biggest governments. shitty civics.

@wjmaggos
@stefan

The legal principle is sound: state governments have the right to regulate what services are offered in their state. It's applied to all kinds of industries all the time.

The problem is that the law's substance is nonsense.