Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Molly Buckley
“If you live in Mississippi, you may have noticed that you are no longer able to log into your Bluesky or Dreamwidth accounts from within the state. That’s because, in a chilling early warning sign for the U.S., both social platforms decided to block all users in Mississippi from their services rather than risk hefty fines under the state’s oppressive age verification mandate. If this sounds like censorship to you, you’re right — it is. But it’s not these small platforms’ fault. This is the unfortunate result of Mississippi’s wide-sweeping age verification law …. Lawmakers often sell age-verification mandates as a silver bullet for Big Tech’s harms, but in practice, these laws do nothing to rein in the tech giants. Instead, they end up crushing smaller platforms that can’t absorb the exorbitant costs.” (09/05/25)