Our Response to Mississippi's Age Assurance Law
78 comments
·August 22, 2025stego-tech
rtkwe
There are significant factions who would prefer porn be eradicated in it's entirety and laws like this just use 'protecting children' as the more agreable face to their crusade. Ironically the same people who often crow about parental autonomy and how they should be in complete control of their children's education and lives.
hobo_in_library
To be fair, their concern tends to be a more consistent "Don't push these corrupting agents towards me or my society"
If the school curriculum aligned with their belief system, they won't be talking about a need for control
Aurornis
> If the school curriculum aligned with their belief system, they won't be talking about a need for control
No they wouldn’t. They don’t want anyone accessing materials they disagree with. Having such materials available on the internet feels like a threat to themselves and their children. They don’t care about collateral damage, they just want more control.
Loughla
If they had control of the school they wouldn't be talking about needing control of the school?
nilespotter
> crow about parental autonomy and how they should be in complete control of their children's education and lives.
Ah yes, those monsters
margalabargala
The US fought a whole war with itself over whether people should be allowed to own other people. They shouldn't, we decided, except on certain circumstances.
Some parents, finding themselves owning a child, decide to push the boundaries of what they get to do with their possessions to the point that it runs afoul of other laws against how humans treat one another.
john01dav
Children are human beings who need growing autonomy as they mature, not property of parents. I have several (adult, to be clear) friends who have suffered serious damage due to overly authoritarian parenting.
Braxton1980
They are monsters because of what they will do to obtain their goals.
Avshalom
I mean yes, treating children as property that you control rather than people you are obligated to care for does make you a monster.
hyperadvanced
Evil little fuckers. Who even thinks that the US Federal Government isn’t totally qualified to be in complete control of their children’s education and lives, anyway? Probably some racist Ruby Ridge types (/s)
ForOldHack
The hypocrisy is very clearly evident.
And there is nothing on Blue sky that is not appropriate for children over 13-with parental guidance.
They do need to keep the morons, and knuckle dragging lawyers off the platform simply because of their felonious actions and prison records.
null
frumplestlatz
> And there is nothing on Blue sky that is not appropriate for children over 13-with parental guidance.
I've heard that it's full of furry porn and worse. Is that not the case?
UncleMeat
This isn't even really it. If you read the section of Project2025 about porn and these sorts of age laws, then barely talk about porn at all. They lead with "transgender ideology" and such. The goal isn't to keep porn away from kids. The goal is to keep anything that offends their desired hierarchy away from kids.
gjsman-1000
Everybody has a desired hierarchy; and you have one too. Own it; fight for it if you can; and recognize someone has to lose.
aprilthird2021
> As I’ve argued on past threads about these laws: the internet was neither built nor intended for children. Nobody can get online without some adult intervention (paying for an ISP), and that’s the only age check that’s ever needed.
> For everything else, it’s up to parents or guardians to implement filters, content controls, and blocks.
Well, they are implementing the block through political pressure, and it's working
sarchertech
I know people whose kid got a hand me down android from a friend and connects through neighbors open WiFi, public open WiFi etc…
And from what I’ve heard it’s not that uncommon for kids to do something similar when parents take away their phones.
It’s easy to say that parents should just limit access and I think they should. I definitely plan to when my kids are old enough for this to be a problem.
But kids are under extreme peer pressure to be constantly online, and when a kid is willing to go to extreme lengths to get access, it can be nearly impossible to prevent it.
There’s also more to it than what parents should do. It’s about what parents are doing. If something is very hard to do most people won’t do it. As a society we all have to deal with the consequences of bad parenting.
We don’t know the consequences of kids having access to porn, but we have correlative studies that show they probably aren’t good.
I’m more concerned with social media than porn though. The correlation between social media use and the rise in teen suicide rates looks awfully suggestive.
john01dav
> I’m more concerned with social media than porn though. The correlation between social media use and the rise in teen suicide rates looks awfully suggestive.
This problem isn't specific to children. Addictive and often otherwise manipulative too feeds affect people of all ages. Instead of age checks, I'd much rather address this. A starting point for how to do this could be banning algorithmic feeds and having us go back to simple algorithms like independent forum websites with latest post first display order.
ForOldHack
So you are saying that we should buy stock in VPN companies that serve Missashity?
Braxton1980
"As a society we all have to deal with the consequences of bad parenting."
Then why isn't that significantly regulated?
sarchertech
It is. We force parents to send their children to school until they are 16 or educate them themselves—along with many other regulations on how you can raise your kids.
We also put limits on brick and mortar business to help parents. We don’t allow liquor stores to sell alcohol to kids. You could argue that parents should be the ones preventing their kids from buying alcohol, and requiring everyone to submit ID in order to prevent underage drinking is the state doing parent’s job for them.
rpdillon
> That’s why until legal challenges to this law are resolved, we’ve made the difficult decision to block access from Mississippi IP addresses. We know this is disappointing for our users in Mississippi, but we believe this is a necessary measure while the courts review the legal arguments.
I strongly agree with this. All these jurisdictions and politicians are passing laws that they don't understand the technical foundations for. Second order effects aren't being considered.
gmueckl
Sometimes (only sometimes, I promise) I wonder whether this kind of legislation is being dreamt up by a think tank tasked with planning how to implement some ulterior goal (e.g. massively increased surveillance to fight crime - it's far too easy to unsert something more nefarious here). The politicians then just follow the action plan and repeat talking points from party advisors.
viscountchocula
Yes: it's called Project 2025
frumplestlatz
This is the only mention of "age verification" in all 900 pages of Project 2025:
"In addition, some of the methods used to regulate children’s internet access pose the risk of unintended harms. For instance, age verification regulations would inevitably increase the amount of data collection involved, increasing privacy concerns. Users would have to submit to platforms proof of their age, which raises the risks of data breach or illegitimate data usage by the platforms or bad actors. Limited-government conservatives would prefer the FTC play an educational role instead. That might include best practices or educational programs to empower parents online."
The policy recommendations for "Protecting Children Online" are found on page 875. The two main recommendations they make are:
"The FTC should examine platforms’ advertising and contract-making with children as a deceptive or unfair trade practice, perhaps requiring written parental consent."
"The FTC can and should institute unfair trade practices proceedings against entities that enter into contracts with children without parental consent. Personal parental responsibility is, of course, key, but the law must respect, not undermine, lawful parental authority."
https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...
ForOldHack
Like the German Socialist Democratic Party did in Germany in 1933? How well did that go?
poly2it
How can we be sure they don't understand at this point? They'd really have to be morons, how can they even take care of themselves?
ToucanLoucan
Have you seen Congress? It’s like Denny’s on senior appreciation day.
They had to wheel McConnell in not long ago because he physically couldn’t walk.
And like I don’t mean to shit on the elderly (directly anyway) but I dunno just spitballing here, maybe we could get some folks in there who weren’t born yet when the civil rights act was passed???
Braxton1980
Why would that matter? There are many young members who congress who also support the same things.
dhosek
Have you listened to any legislative debates on technical issues? “A series of tubes” was the high point of political understanding of the internet.
ForOldHack
Wait! What? The high point was a stunning display of the Dunning-Kruger effect?
We should pay John Cheese to call them all personally.
alsetmusic
> We think this law creates challenges that go beyond its child safety goals, and creates significant barriers that limit free speech and disproportionately harm smaller platforms and emerging technologies.
This is the only correct response to such onerous legislation. Every site affected by such over-reach has a moral duty to do the same. Not that I expect them to do so.
nickff
If you think this is bad, you should see the regulatory burden imposed on small manufacturers. This is nothing. The problem is that voters don’t seem to care about regulatory requirements.
duxup
I can't find the comic I saw but I can't find that notes how we tell people and kids to not give out personal information on the internet because that's unsafe.
Now we demand they give all their information and depending on the situation smile for the camera ...
WrongOnInternet
...And also lets make it so they can't encrypt their messages either. Big Brother needs to make sure they aren't sending nudes to people that shouldn't be seeing them.
ForOldHack
Wait! Wait! Is this the same state that wanted welfare recipients to be tested for drugs and it was found that the drug use by legislators was ten times higher?
nashashmi
We might need a centralized age verification system. A person verifies their age using an app. The app is on the phone of the user and confirms opening new account.
Then you have accounts that are age verified and accounts that are not age verified. Age verified accounts have the privilege of seeing sensitive content. Unverified accounts don’t have that privilege.
Some might see this as gravitating to bad laws. I see this as an attempt to address a prohibition on doing business.
t-writescode
A more appropriate route to that is to create incentives and grants for companies to be created that can accomplish this age verification infrastructure (ideally with its own privacy guarantees, etc), and make a declaration such as “in 5 years, you will be expected to validate and track the age group of all users on your platform. We have created grants to help create technology companies and a platform that will help to implement and privatize this service”.
That way you get both:
* companies that can provide the service (yay capitalism, middlemen and jobs!)
* compliance with the new laws that help to stratify users so that < 18 and > 18 users are identified and segregated.proteal
Figured I’d ask the HN crowd- what’s the best way around these geofence blocks? Have you had success with a system that can work smoothly on mobile/desktop without any of the disastrous privacy and performance implications that VPN services are prone to?
Hobadee
All arguments about age checks themselves aside, why can BlueSky implement age checks in the UK, but not Mississippi? Seems to me like the only difference would be Mississippi requiring everyone to log in, whereas currently I assume UK requires a login just for age-restricted material. (Although I don't use BlueSky in the UK, so shrugs)
sys_64738
I'd prefer all businesses impacted by the draconian Brit legislation block the Brits geo completely.
kayodelycaon
The UK only requires verification for specific content. Not the entire site. Also, the identification and tracking requirements are very different.
kg
Yes, they explained that the UK's regulations are less aggressive so it's possible to comply with them
Braxton1980
They could based on group but you can get around that. Maybe they are concerned that a user using a VPN from Mississippi would cause them to break the law.
herf
Assuming mobile platforms weigh in with an API sometime, it's notable that the only people allowed online by default would be minors who are using parental controls, because they would be able to prove (a) age and (b) parental consent on day 1.
djoldman
I wonder if a business could be successfully sued for denying service to people OVER a certain age.
It's interesting that age seems to be a protected class if you're above a certain age and not below.
leecoursey
Is there not some way to route Mississippi's Bluesky traffic through a third party (Cloudflare?, etc.?) that can provide age verification and parental consent as a service, so that it doesn't require every individual online service to implement it separately?
kayodelycaon
I don’t think that service exists yet. These laws are very new.
radium3d
Way to blow it, Mississippi
Braxton1980
Reminder
Republicans, for many years now, have run on "stop big government regulations" without being specific.
MostlyStable
That republican party has been dead for a while now, to the extent that they won't even be ashamed. They think that government should be big, and doing the things that they want it to do.
The name is the same, but that's pretty much all that's left compared to 20ish years ago.
rjbwork
Just a dog whistle for "stop taxing rich people" and "stop providing services to everyone else". They're very much in favor of restrictive regulations for the hoi polloi.
You’re going to see more of this heavy-handed response, especially from smaller sites or decentralized services.
As I’ve argued on past threads about these laws: the internet was neither built nor intended for children. Nobody can get online without some adult intervention (paying for an ISP), and that’s the only age check that’s ever needed.
For everything else, it’s up to parents or guardians to implement filters, content controls, and blocks.