Ask HN: How will the OSA affect small Mastodon instances?

I am not currently a user of Mastodon, but I have some interest in the project. I was looking at some stuff that seemed to indicate to me that the OSA could make it difficult to self host Mastodon without providing age verification. I was then reading the provisions and realsised that it didn't really affect you unless you have at least 3 million monthly users, so in theory would not affect self hosters with only a few users. But then I thought that if you are federated with a very large instance then your users could potentially be able to interact with enough users to fall under the provisions.

This could potentially be a grey area that could expose self hosters to considerable risk if they are not careful.

I wonder if there any UK based Mastodon hosters out there who are considering this. Are you considering shutting down to prevent any liability? Could this be the "death" of Mastodon hosting in the UK?


Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44722602

Points: 13

# Comments: 5

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44722602

Created 1d | Jul 29, 2025, 2:40:12 PM


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