Can You Use GDPR to Circumvent Bluesky's Adult Content Blocks?

Summary

In the battle between the Online Safety Act and GDPR, who will win? FIGHT! I'll start by saying that I'm moderately positive on Online Safety. If services don't want to provide moderation then they shouldn't let their younger users be exposed to harm. The social network BlueSky has taken a pragmatic approach to this. If you don't want to verify your age, you can still use its services - but it won't serve you porn or let people send you non-public messages. I think that's pretty reasonable. I don't use BSky to look at naked mole rats people, and I already have plenty of other messaging accounts. So I haven't verified my age. There are two slight wrinkles with BSky's implementation. Firstly, there's no way to retrieve DMs which were sent before this restriction came into force. Oh, you can one-click export your data - but it only includes public data. So no DMs. Secondly, you can't turn off DM from people who have previously messaged you. I asked people to message me to see if they got an error - but it looks like the messages just get silently accepted. I probably look a bit rude if I don't answer them. Worse still, the DM notification keeps incrementing! It is possible to turn off DMs - but only if you can access your DM settings. Which you can't if you haven't passed age assurance. Well, what about GDPR? BlueSky's privacy policy has this to say about DMs: Your Direct Messages. We store and process your direct messages in order to enable you to communicate directly and privately with other users on the Bluesky App. These are unencrypted and can be accessed for Trust and Safety purposes. They go on to say that I may have the right to: Request Access to and Portability of Your Personal Information, including: (i) obtaining access to or a copy of your personal information; and (ii) receiving an electronic copy of personal information that you have provided to us, or asking us to send that information to another company in a structured, commonly used, and machine-reada...