The nonprofit operator of Mastodon has informed server administrators that it does not have a practical means of enforcing a Mississippi law that requires online platforms to verify users’ ages, stating that the network’s decentralized design is such that it does not collect identifying data.
In public exchanges this week, Mastodon’s founder claimed there is no central authority that could command the entire Fediverse to prevent people from one state from using it. That view was met with skepticism from others in the social media world about how liability under the law might affect individual server operators.
Mastodon’s software team has said that the platform does not monitor users in ways that would allow easy enforcement on a state-by-state level. The group also said it is loath to endorse IP-based blocking as a remedy — a practice that can ensnare legitimate users who are merely rebooting and heading to a different state.
The release, which the project made along with a new requirement for server administrators to enforce a minimum age at sign-up, doesn’t retain verification data. As a result, the nonprofit said, responsibility for carrying out any verification process ends up in the hands of the operators of individual instances.
Mastodon gGmbH stated it’s unable to offer operational support to the broader community of server hosts and advised administrators to refer to available trust and safety resources and to follow the laws in the jurisdictions they fall under. The organization noted that it does not police or govern the policies of independently operated servers.
Supporters of the state law have described it as a safeguard for minors, though opponents say it could be hard to apply enforcement mechanisms to federated networks and put individual hosts at risk of high penalties. The law has elements that call for heavy monetary penalties in case of noncompliance, a fact that a source of disagreement over whether decentralized platforms can actually follow these rules.
The debate comes after other social platforms have responded with different policies based on the law, in some cases limiting or stopping services in the state. Mastodon’s announcement highlights the technical and policy challenges that distributed networks are confronting when state-level regulation requires either centralized control or real name tracking.