Age verification, meaning a system that requires internet users to prove their age before accessing a platform, is now at the center of a 47-state settlement with Meta. New York Governor Kathy Hochul says those controls are necessary to protect teenagers. Critics argue the rules will effectively de-anonymize the entire internet for adults.
The settlement Hochul helped negotiate includes no push notifications to users under 18 between midnight and 6 AM, restrictions on addictive algorithms targeting minors, automatic privacy controls set by default, and limits on AI chatbot access for young people. The practical problem is this: to confirm that a user is a minor, a platform must know how old every user is. Adults who never intended to be covered by these restrictions end up showing the internet their identification to prove they are old enough to browse freely.
Hochul said New York already has laws more restrictive than what Meta agreed to in the settlement. She is not worried about a First Amendment challenge to those laws, arguing that limiting late-night notifications to a 13-year-old is a different matter from restricting speech.
The school phone ban and what the numbers say
New York became the largest state in the country to ban cell phones in schools. The ban took effect in September. A survey conducted in May found that between 75 and 80 percent of schools surveyed reported positive results. Hochul said she spent about a year holding roundtables with students across the state, where young people described the anxiety of missing a group message and the social exclusion that followed. Students who initially resisted the ban are now playing cards, trading baseball cards, and forming in-person friendships, she said.
Ghost guns, data centers, and where Hochul draws the line
Ghost guns, firearms assembled from 3D-printed parts without serial numbers or background checks, are prohibited in New York. Cody Wilson, who runs the largest database of 3D-printable gun files, has responded by altering those files in a process he calls "Hochulization," designed to defeat the digital fingerprinting the law relies on to identify gun components at the printer. Hochul said she will get ahead of him.
The governor signed a one-year moratorium on new data center construction in July and said she is looking for conditions that would make data centers a workable proposition when that period ends. She cited the Micron investment in Syracuse, which she described as the largest private-sector investment in American history and a source of 50,000 jobs, as the kind of tech growth she wants to attract. New York has surpassed California as the top state for tech job creation, she said.