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Mastodon says it doesn’t ‘have the means’ to comply with age verification laws
Decentralized social network Mastodon says it cannot comply with age verification laws, like in Mississippi and elsewhere, and says it's up to individual server owners to decide.
The statement follows a lively back-and-forth conversation earlier this weekbetween Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko and Bluesky board member and journalist Mike Masnick. The Mastodon 4.4 release in July 2025 added the ability to specify a minimum age for sign-up and other legal features for handling terms of service, partly in response to increased regulation around these areas. Instead, it encourages owners of Mastodon and other Fediverse servers to make use of resources available online, such as the IFTAS library, which provides trust and safety support for volunteer social network moderators.
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