Left echo chamber Bluesky, which bills itself as an alternative social media platform to Elon Musk’s X, is blocking access to users in Mississippi rather than comply with a new age verification law. The platform has previously acknowledged a child pornography problem amongst its far-left userbase.
TechCrunch reports that leftist social media platform Bluesky announced in a blog post that it will block access to its service for users in Mississippi due to the state’s new age assurance law, HB 1126. The law requires social media platforms to introduce age verification for all users before they can access the networks. Bluesky claims that as a small team with limited resources, it does not have the capacity to make the substantial technical changes required by this law.
The company raised concerns about the law’s broad scope and privacy implications. Unlike other age verification laws, such as the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA), which only requires age checks for certain content and features, Mississippi’s law mandates age verification for all users. This means that Bluesky would have to verify every user’s age and obtain parental consent for anyone under 18, with potential penalties for noncompliance reaching up to $10,000 per user.
Bluesky emphasized that the law goes beyond its intended purpose of child safety and would create “significant barriers that limit free speech and disproportionately harm smaller platforms and emerging technologies.” To comply with the law, the company would have to collect and store sensitive information from all its users, in addition to detailed tracking of minors. Interestingly, the company had no free speech concerns which it rushed to announce that it would comply with Europe’s censorship guidelines.
Breitbart News previously reported that as Bluesky became the home of radical leftists unhappy with conservatives facing less censorship on X, the platform was flooded with complaints and censorship requests. Users also flagged many examples of child pornography:
Jay Graber, the 33-year-old chief executive of Bluesky, acknowledged the challenges that come with such rapid growth. “We as a team take pride in our ability to scale quickly,” she said in an interview. “But there’s always some growing pains.” Graber revealed that the app, which is still significantly smaller than its competitors, is adding more than one million new users per day.
After days of explosive growth on the platform, the Bluesky Safety team posted Friday that it received 42,000 moderation reports in the preceding 24 hours, compared to 360,000 in all of 2023. Most troublingly, the company acknowledged that it is receiving reports of “CSAM” or child sexual abuse material, commonly known as child pornography.
Read more at TechCrunch here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
