- Bluesky has decided to leave the Mississippi in response to the new age verification law
- Under the law, social media platforms must verify the age of all users before granting them access
- Residents of Mississippi can continue to access Bluesky by usurping their IP address with a VPN
Bluesky decided to Get out of the Mississippi in response to the new age checking law, which now requires social media platforms to check the age of each user before giving them access.
Elon Musk’s rival X of Elon Musk warns that the new requirements “would fundamentally change the way users access Bluesky”, while opening up to the confidentiality and security challenges that would have an impact on small suppliers in particular.
Consequently, from Friday August 22, 2025, Bluesky blocks all the traffic in the Mississippi IP addresses. This means, however, that users based in the state may be able to turn to the best VPN services to continue using the application.
“We do not make this decision lightly,” wrote Bluesky in his official announcement, while ensuring that children’s safety remains a central priority. However, “we believe that this law creates challenges that go beyond its children’s safety objectives, and creates important obstacles that limit freedom of expression and disproportionately disproportionate to smaller platforms and emerging technologies.”
Being a decentralized platform, the block only applies to the Bluesky application built on the AT protocol. “Other applications and services can choose to respond differently,” said the supplier.
Why is Bluesky worried about the Mississippi age verification approach?
According to the Mississippi HB1126 law, which was confirmed by the United States Supreme Court on August 14, all social media platforms must check that each user access to the platform is over 18 years old and obtain parents’ consent for all minors who seek to use the application.
The law also obliges technology suppliers to identify and follow all adolescent and children users. Non-compliance fines can reach $ 10,000 per user.
“The construction of the required verification systems, parents’ consent workflows and compliance infrastructure would require significant resources that our small team is currently unable to save as we invest in the development of safety tools and features for our global community,” said Bluesky.
The economic burden is only half of history.
Bluesky also fears that the “large extent of the law” can affect all citizens of Mississippi (not just minors) to use their favorite platforms, which has a negative impact on their right to freedom of expression and access to information.
The supplier also warns against the implications of confidentiality which could result from the collection and storage of this sensitive information on all users, as well as the monitoring of online minors.
Unfortunately, Bluesky is not available in the Mississippi at the moment, due to a new law of the State which requires an age verification for all users. Although intended for children’s safety, we believe that this law poses wider challenges and creates important obstacles that limit freedom of expression and harm smaller platforms like ours.
– @ bsky.app ( @ bsky.app.bsky.social) 2025-08-26t14: 19: 50.674Z
Age checks are not the real problem here either. Bluesky was indeed one of the first suppliers to apply age verification rules in the United Kingdom.
However, there is a substantial difference between the two laws.
Under the UK Online Safety Act, Bluesky and similar suppliers are required to check the age of users only to access the content deemed legal but harmful.
“The Mississippi law, on the other hand, would prevent everyone from accessing the site – adolescents and adults – unless they give sensitive information, and once they do it, the Mississippi law requires that Bluesky keeps a trace of users,” said the supplier.
Can a VPN help?
The Bluesky application is now defined to block access to all Mississippi IP addresses “until the judicial disputes of this law are resolved,” said the supplier.
A virtual private network (VPN) could however help you come back online. A VPN is security software that not only crypt all your Internet connections, but also usurping your IP address by releasing your traffic via one of its international servers.
Therefore, if you are at Mississippi and you want to continue accessing Bluesky, all you have to do is connect to a based VPN server where the application is available.
Do not forget, however, to use only reliable and secure services to make sure that your data remains safe. At the time of writing the editorial staff, NordVPN is the main recommendation of Techradar. If you are not willing to pay a subscription for the moment, I suggest checking our best free VPN guide, Privadovpn and Proton VPN being the best choices today.
