Discussion
News: Tech Crunch | Bluesky rolls out age verification for users in Ohio | Sept 29, 2025
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/29/bluesky-rolls-out-age-verification-for-users-in-ohio/
"The Ohio law, meant to protect kids from pornography, will require users in Ohio to upload a copy of their government-issued photo ID or other personal identification... Bluesky [also] recently committed to more aggressively punishing those who violate the site’s guidelines..."
@mastodonmigration Yikes. As I’ve said for the umpteenth time: I’ll just happily slum it here with y’all.
💯! Back at you Pamela.
if/when my state requires this is the day I leave the platform.
RE: https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/115289804212133504
So, here is a Bluesky question. Can people in Ohio simply switch to Blacksky?
Let's say you are in one of the states that #Bluesky is now requiring you do age verification, or for any other reason you don't like the current direction of Bluesky PBC, can you really just go sign up for #Blacksky...
Blacksky sign-up >>> https://blacksky.community/starter-pack/rudyfraser.com/3kvubqmzzi32t
...and will you then be able to interact with the entire Bluesky network without doing the age verification thing?
@mastodonmigration Yeah, as I understand, the implementation is the same as with UK before, which means it's possible to work around it:
1) by using a different client (Skeets, Skywalker, Skeetdeck etc.) or a forked version of the webapp (deer.social, blacksky.community etc.)
2) by blocking/overriding some things in the browser
3) by overriding some requests in a self-hosted PDS
User @mary.my.id collected all info here: https://gist.github.com/mary-ext/6e27b24a83838202908808ad528b3318
@mastodonmigration so it should be very easy in the webapp, less so in the mobile app, especially on iOS, since AFAIK there are no forks of their official app in the App Store yet (but maybe Blacksky is working on one? not sure); so in that case either a different third party client / or mobile webapp in Safari / or own PDS / or VPN
@mastodonmigration For background, I have been posting about Ohio's new law for a while.
The law actually targets porn and other unnamed "harmful" sites that is primarily centered on explicit content and makes a significant amount of money on said content... This seems premature, imo.
My latest, among several posts since it was signed into law over the summer:
https://oldfriends.live/@paul/115287206351855060
"An Act, Am. Sub. H. B. No. 96" (pdf). Starts on page 655 https://search-prod.lis.state.oh.us/api/v2/general_assembly_136/legislation/hb96/07_EN/pdf
@mastodonmigration What an amazing, decentralzied, censorship free platform bsky is. PrOtOcOOLs NoT pLaTfOrM
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