New York Establishes Stringent Protections to Safeguard Kids on Social Media | Hacker News Reader

New York Establishes Stringent Protections to Safeguard Kids on Social Media

governor.ny.gov

> Addictive feeds, or algorithmically driven feeds, facilitate unhealthy levels of social media use. This legislation will require social media companies to restrict addictive feeds on their platforms for users under 18. Unless parental consent is granted, users under 18 will not receive addictive feeds. Notably, the SAFE for Kids Act is the first bill of its kind to be signed into law in any state across the nation.

What is an "algorithmically driven feed"? Does sorting by most commented, most upvoted, or most viewed count? Does Hackernews count as social media, and will it now require age verification / parental consent?

> Despite numerous exceptions, an “addictive feed” is a platform where multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users are recommended, selected, or prioritized based on user-related information.

From: https://www.hinshawlaw.com/newsroom-updates-pcad-new-york-ch...

The term "algorithmic" in this context is frustratingly, but obviously, not the general CS usage.

What's meant, more or less, as indicated by the "addictive", are feeds that:

1. Optimize for user engagement.

2. Are opaque to the user.

3. Are not controlled by the user.

A sort by a field does not constitute such an "algorithm".

One might argue that even having a default to sort by "most views" or "popularity" is a gray zone, but I'd say they differ per #2/3 in that the data used to order the items are completely visible to the user, and they are making an affirmative choice to sort by that data.

I would prefer the use of terminology such as "metric-driven/metric-independent", "user-opaque/user-transparent" and "user-controlled/service-controlled".

I would also prefer we refer to "predictive models" rather than algorithms, as that immediately implies the presence of some likelihood/metric being optimized for (by the service, not the user) in an almost certainly opaque or incomprehensible way.

That said, I think for now we're stuck with "algorithm" having a very overloaded lay definition and just have to play ball rather than split hairs. There's too much at stake.

The law appears to be limited to feeds that are personalized based on user/device information or interactions, with various exceptions for things like explicit subscriptions, search results and more.

Based on the language, it kind of looks like it might apply to sites like Amazon though since users do upload content and there are personalized recommendations that are core to the site.

https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2023/S7694A

Trying to deconstruct some relatively obvious everyday term into nothingness to somehow evade its definition seems to be the standard counter strategy of tech against any kind of regulation by now...

And "I know it when I see it" is the go-to rationale of people who merely want to arbitrarily ban stuff they don't personally enjoy.

There's a definition in the law of "addictive feed" that (cleaning up some of the obtuse terminology) boils down to:

"user-generated content, sorted or displayed in any user-specific manner except if that manner is one of the following:

* transient and not based on user's interaction with content

* an accessibility option

* user's subscribed list (assuming that subsort/subfiltering also independently complies with these rules)

* user's follow or block list (again assuming subsort/subfiltering also independently complies)

* DMs

* response to a search query

* author's explicit ordering for content

* anything we the state make you do"

By my reading, HN qualifies, as does any site that has a "threads you replied to" page, because it doesn't quite fit any of the categories (although there is an argument that it's a "response to a specific search inquiry).

The law largely says that the “addictive feed” is ordered based on some trait of the user.

The part of the definition: “display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device”

So HN wouldn’t qualify, as the ordering is independent of the user.

The posts you have made is information "associated with the user", is it not?

The fact of the matter is that there is a link on this page called "threads" that, if I click it, gives me a different result than if you were to click it. The result of that difference is a different list of user-generated posts... so it seems to me that it absolutely qualifies the preamble of the definition, and it's not clear to me that it satisfies any of the exceptions.

But the posts on HN are not re-ordered according to the user. It’s about prioritizing or recommending, not just “there’s a difference”.

IMO the “threads” would fall under the exceptions of

(f) the media are recommended, selected, or prioritized only in response to a specific search inquiry by the user

Or maybe

(g) the media recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is exclusively next in a pre-existing sequence from the same author, creator, poster, or source;

> It’s about prioritizing or recommending, not just “there’s a difference”.

The text is "recommended, selected, or prioritized", and the selective presence or absence of comments is, well, "selected".

> (g) the media recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is exclusively next in a pre-existing sequence from the same author, creator, poster, or source;

This one I'm reasonably confident doesn't apply because it's worded so narrowly. First, there's "exclusively" which means any other factor being present causes this to fail to apply. Then there's "from the same author, creator, poster, or source"--the fact that threads are usually involving multiple authors means that the sequence doesn't come from the "same" author.

> (f) the media are recommended, selected, or prioritized only in response to a specific search inquiry by the user

What gives me pause here is I don't know what "specific search inquiry by the user" means. It feels to me like the drafter wants this to be interpreted in response to particular search terms (like posts containing "fuck" or something) and a bound like "threads involving me" isn't really a search term in that same sense.

Stepping back a bit, the fundamental problem here is that this is a law that's being motivated by hatred of something that the author can't adequately describe. They came up with an overbroad definition that could encompass any activity they think might fall under that behavior, and when someone pointed out the absurdity of the definition, rather than trying to narrow down the definition, merely start patching it with exceptions for examples people thought of. (Well, it's possible it's drafted to try to make the law constitutional where every other attempt has been ruled unconstitutional, but quite frankly, none of this definition makes it more likely to be constitutional, so I doubt that anyone who is savvy enough to realize the constitutional pitfalls of writing this kind of law is dumb enough to think that this way will pass muster.)

But what if I've hidden a post?

I think the state could offer harm reduction programs to adults, in these initiatives

I hear so many people either lamenting or criticizing children’s behaviors, not knowing they themselves are affected the same way

Take an in person community college class and see for yourself. Many of us will be wishing we had a fidget spinner too

HN isn't personalised.

I'm not sure if that's how this law is defined but it feels fairly easy to see the difference between an aggregator like HN and a bottomless feed designed to exploit my previous activity.

The term "algorithmically driven feed" is not used in the statute. It uses the term "addictive feed". This term is defined in the statute.

Section 1500(1): "Addictive feed" shall mean a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, either concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are met, alone or in combination with one another: ..."

Is sorting by most commented, most upvoted or most viewed "based on information associated with the user or the user's device"? The answer should be self-evident.

Whether HN "counts as social media" is irrelevant if it is not an "addictive social media platform", another term defined in the statute. Under that definition, if a website does not offer an "addictive feed" then it is not an "addictive social media platform".

To be perfectly honest, I’m extremely conflicted with this kind of legislation—natural physical social interactions have all but atrophied in huge swaths of American youth, and social media is the way kids ultimately communicate. I don’t think that limiting social media exposure will somehow restore in-person physical interaction, and it could just prove to atomize and isolate kids even more than they ultimately are. It is very typical that the state wields the law like a hammer and doesn’t consider the blowback—they should be thinking about how to restore real in-person intimate relationships amongst children.

Your comment suggests you didn't look into what this policy actually does.

It doesn't ban kids from connecting with their peers on social media or even from following popular (or esoteric) influencers.

It just prevents providers from algorithmically optimizing kids' feeds for engagement or whatever else, and adds some limits to when notifications are allowed.

Both are actually pretty modest and would seem entirely reasonable in light of what concerns you raised.

I was at a pizza place and saw a group of 6 or more teenagers sitting together. They were all on their phones with the personification of ennui upon their faces.

Just an anecdote.

I've seen the same thing with a gaggle of boomers sitting in bar together all not talking and just drinking. No phones.

As someone who was a kid in the pre-iPhone / mobile internet era, I'd say,

>> Life, uh, finds a way

Things worked just fine over multi-tap keypad SMS, and there were even complaints about kids being sucked into their phones then!

Pretty sure if you physically separated every teenager on the planet in a dark basement, they'd have rats carrying braille messages implemented in a week.

“Things worked just fine over multi-tap keypad SMS” - did they though? Imagine all the time you spent as a child in front of advertising generation machines, television probably the most, and what you could have done with that time instead if they weren’t around or at the least not quite compelling.

Just because it wasn’t as bad when you were young doesn’t mean it was fine then or now. Kids need to be able to be kids, not preyed upon as revenue streams.

> Just because it wasn’t as bad when you were young doesn’t mean it was fine then or now.

Not as bad can mean fine depending on your goals.

The difference of TV advertising is that it was only loosely (channel audience) targeted. There was no individually-level tracking and micro-targeting.

So while my cohort was bathed in cathode rays, I don't think it was as influential.

It's good we have different states/schools trying different things, all within the realm of sensible ideas. This creates natural experiments which will be studied in detail, and which will guide evidence-based policymaking.

There's enough plausible evidence linking social media to problems in youth that we have to bite the bullet and try something, then reassess afterwards, rather than be caught in analysis paralysis about what may go wrong with attempts to fix the issues.

Social media isn't the problem. Centralized, corporate, censored, ad company social networks are.

What are you proposing? That childhood now just is an isolated and gloomy affair, and we should just accept it? Price of progress and all?

> Legislation S.7695B/A.8149A enables the New York Child Data Protection Act to prohibit online sites from collecting, using, sharing or selling personal data of anyone under the age of 18, unless they receive informed consent or unless doing so is strictly necessary for the purpose of the website.

That's a lot of "unless" there, which doesn't make me very optimistic for its impact. I haven't heard yet from a scenario where selling a minor's personal data is strictly necessary for the technical operation of a site, but I'm sure we'll discover lots of such cases very soon...

Also, as an adult, I find it interesting that the "informed consent" requirement is restricted to kids only. Sure, adults should be trusted to decide for themselves whether or not they want to share their data, but wouldn't they at least need some opportunity to decide for that?

This is great, I hope they look into fixing addictive music next. Chechnya is way ahead of the game on solving these societal woes [0].

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/08/europe/chechnya-music-ban-scl...

S.7694B/A.8148A: https://nyassembly.gov/leg/?default_fld&leg_video&bn=A08148&...

S.7695B/A.8149A: https://nyassembly.gov/leg/?default_fld=%0D%0A&leg_video=&bn...

It looks like both of these bills give a lot of power to the AG to determine how they are implemented.

That's one aspect, but what about the internal decisions of knowingly harming an audience (under age or not) for higher margins?

When a company knows they make more money by increasing harm to their "livestock" and repeatedly choose that path - that's a line crossed in my world.

I'm open to philosophical capitialistic justifications, money is SO cool to have. But going after little girls with that attitude as FBook did; it's just kind of a dead end for me.

Regulations concerning new problems often provoke cynical reactions that rely entirely on intuition. You see it being applied here: this will backfire, this will isolate kids more, this will make parents less responsible, etc. These kinds of reactions are simplistic and cut off debate. There is a wide array of things we can do between nothing at all and a paranoid "protect-the-kids", state-run total technology shutdown.

> " or unless doing so is strictly necessary for the purpose of the website."

so this legislation is active unless the website needs it... toothless legislation, looks like a classic market capture law

The nature of the Internet is for adults. It should be 18+ and enforced with a universal identity system using an x509 like cert signing system. It is the ethically correct decision to reverse the chaotic entropy that turned the Internet into the predatory, low quality and abusive system it is today.

As a parent, I wish people who monetize attention had not hurt the development of my children’s social skills.

We really tried to curb their engagement with attention-channeling apps and devices, but it got to a point where restricting was enough to label parents as harsh, strict luddites.

I suspect it will take a generation or two to revert the effects of that attention hijacking.

The weirdest thing to me is just how scattershot this problem is. My kids are still young but I’ve got friends who are having a terrible time with this issue, and friends who have had no problem at all with their kids.

I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s some environmental factor I might leverage but I just don’t see a meaningfully obvious difference. I guess people are varied and complex.

I bet the most significant factor is social group. If their friends are classmates are constantly talking about things they’ve seen on TikTok, then it’s going to be very difficult to keep your kids off it.

Peer pressure is the biggest factor. There is probably a threshold beyond which your kids are going to give their attention away because so many of their friends are doing it. I once hosted a birthday party where after the cake was cut, all 7 kids were on their phones, barely interacting. That was one of the most dystopian thing I have experienced.

I imagine it will depend on the child. I recall a friend years ago discussing PTSD and how one soldier will return home scarred for life while another just 50 ft away in another foxhole is just fine.

Yeah mine is a Youtube addict, with almost no control and we kept it like that because while it probably kills her attention, it made her English insane (we re both non native, Im French and my wife Chinese, our daughter speaks like an american while we live in Hong Kong), she knows things we couldnt possibly have taught her, and at 6yo she seems to be genuinely benefitting from it.

Ofc the most annoying is her addiction to toys marketed there, but when I was a kid it was the same with tv, you just need one colorful commercial to be a poisonnous little shit for months until "okay fine yes" is uttered at xmas or someth.

If you've ever seen someone that naturally takes to gambling - like they play, lose, and immediately think they must be due to win now! - that's probably a good analogy as any for how some brains can be more likely to get addicted to activities like this.

It's extremely difficult nowadays to not fall into the temptation of letting a touchscreen be your child's plaything, but I firmly believe the damage they do in their early development stages is so drastic that even if everyone else criticizes you as a luddite (which is hard to take at scale and recurrence), it's worth believing in your own judgement.

The difference between kids with iPads and kids with no access/extremely restricted access is wild.

We were able to resist the pressure until they turned 12 in both cases. But it was not enough, we should have held the line until 16 or 18.

> but it got to a point where restricting was enough to label parents as harsh, strict luddites

Where do you live? I ask because this is not the case where I live in a west coast tech city. People here almost all applaud other parents for limiting screens.

Regardless, don't give in to peer pressure. Setting boundaries is a key responsibility of parenting.

This is kind of unreadable because the page is full of vacuous quotes from smartly-dressed people applauding one another and saying "we applaud this safer safety safeguarding model for the tireless future of the children of the nation in the digital age," and very little mention of the implementation. Will they check age by asking? Is it essentially a law that means that if you're under 18 and want to use social media, you have to lie?

You can read the full text here:

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/S7694/amendm...

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/S7695/amendm...

> THE ATTORNEY GENERAL SHALL PROMULGATE REGULATIONS IDENTIFYING [...] AVAILABLE AGE DETERMINATION TECHNIQUES [...] PREVALENT PRACTICES OF THE INDUSTRY [...] SUCH REGULATIONS SHALL SET FORTH MULTIPLE COMMERCIALLY REASONABLE AND TECHNICALLY FEASIBLE METHODS [...] INCLUDING AT LEAST ONE METHOD THAT EITHER DOES NOT RELY SOLELY ON GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION OR THAT ALLOWS A COVERED USER TO MAINTAIN ANONYMITY

It looks like the plan is for the companies to do age verification somehow. Details to be arranged later, by somebody.

> INCLUDING AT LEAST ONE METHOD THAT EITHER DOES NOT RELY SOLELY ON GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION OR THAT ALLOWS A COVERED USER TO MAINTAIN ANONYMITY

I honestly have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

I think this part is to prevent it conflicting with other laws about privacy ("a covered user" translates as "some kid") and "Existing New York anti-discrimination laws" as it mentions elsewhere, because you can't be discriminated against for lacking government ID.

> The law will also prohibit social media platforms from sending notifications regarding addictive feeds to minors from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. without parental consent.

So they'll need to verify a user's age, and possibly also relationship to another user.

That seems like it would interfere with anonymity which is necessary to be able to speak freely on contentious issues. Or will people saying heretical things just not be able to use fancy feeds or all-hours notifications?

(Or instead of political dissidents, maybe consider people who have a crazy stalker ex.)

Yeah, those cheering this on are missing the trees for the forest - laws with these kind of identity/age validation requirements are the path to normalizing deep bureaucratic integration with the internet at large, it's disheartening to see the TOTC[0] argument work so well here, but it's been proven to be Ol' Reliable especially w/r/t similar legislation targeting adult media companies.

As a former child with internet access who turned out Just Fine, and a strong privacy advocate, the next decade of similarly-inspired lawmaking hurts my heart. There are some good morsels in these laws like the limits on data exchange, but the pieces relying on age, identity, and rules about the presentation of site content are extremely problematic to me. Especially the last piece - I don't see how the State telling a site how its recommendation algorithms can or can't behave doesn't run afoul of the site operator's constitutional freedom of expression in determining the display of its user-generated content.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

There really seems to be no reason whatsoever these protections shouldn't be extended to people over 18. You don't have to check ages that way and the feature has to be there regardless. Also the "after midnight" rule is silly — not bad, just silly. Otherwise good law. A law to "protect the kids" that's actually good? Unheard of.

I wonder how sites will handle content discovery that doesn't run afoul of the law. Like completely seriously Discover Weekly on Spotify sounds like it will have to be age gated since Spotify is technically a social network.

Bro just stop using the feeds. You're an adult. Kids on the other hand should just be banned from social media. I don't want adult spaces to be molded around children.

Girl, a law that mandates you be able to turn off the feeds in favor of chronological is stopping using the feeds.

Also lol at "you're an adult" like that's how addiction works. Just get more willpower bro. There's a reason you have the option to ban yourself from casinos and the option to do so is mandated by law.

"ban this thing for everyone because some people have issues with it" is a non starter

Personal problems do not get social solutions

"a law that mandates you be able to turn off the feeds in favor of chronological"

That doesn't sound like a ban, that sounds like consumer choice.

Nah man, I don't mind the fun police checking my ice cream licence to make sure I haven't gone over my sugar allowance for the month. It's important that we all get punished so fatty doesn't gorge himself to death.

I don't want a ban good lord. How did you even take that from "companies should be legally required to let each individual turn off algorithmic feeds?"

Gambling, alcohol abuse, drug addiction all get social solutions. This law is perfectly consistent how we deal with all other forms of addiction.

It is not that simple.. Adults can also get addicted the same way and their crash radius is also larger. Unless we have a good way to either hold the platforms or the posters accountable, we are developing into a meme-driven society.

For adults, a better solution is to give users more active controls over the feed and its addictive elements. For example, the ability to remove kinds of content (“not interested”), put hard limits on minutes per day (Screen Time), hide Like counts, reduce notifications etc. Lots of other ideas have been proposed for putting users in control of their feeds and limiting dark patterns that promote addiction. If we’re regulating, I’d like more regulation requiring social media platforms to implement these.

Yeah I wish I could use any major website without having algorithmic feeds trying to adict me to everything. Trying to productively use the internet while having an executive function disorder is just frustrating, I've ended up just blocking most sites. Specifically, I would love to keep track of friends on Instagram without the site trying to addict me to it.

> There really seems to be no reason whatsoever these protections shouldn't be extended to people over 18.

The reason is that we let adults choose what to consume.

If you go down the path of banning social media feeds because they might be addictive, prepare for the floodgates of banning alcohol, porn, cigarettes, and more. Some people who don't consume any of those things will gleefully cheer this idea on, but I assure you there are people out there who would gladly ride this wave to start banning things you actually like, too.

Does anyone else find it weird to see so many comments on sites like Hacker News that are in favor of governments regulating what adults can consume? Years ago sites like HN and Slashdot were universally in agreement about internet freedoms, but now it's common to see people inviting government control of the internet for adults. I don't get it.

> now it's common to see people inviting government control of the internet for adults. I don't get it.

Sockpuppets and useful idiots in equal measure.

> The reason is that we let adults choose what to consume

when you are an addict you dont have much of a choice

I think in the past, social media was seen as a subset of tech, we were naturally allies, and gave them a lot of good faith.

More recently people have come around to the idea that these are basically ad companies except much more intrusive and creepy.

Facebook is really quite bad, not in a “oh wow, annoying site full of idiots” way, but in a “incredibly powerful tool for grabbing people’s attention run by a company so negligent that they let it be used to promote ethnic cleansing.”

It also seems pretty addictive and, I haven’t really looked into it, but it sure seems like kids are getting worse and worse at focusing. I’m not sure if it should be banned entirely, but we could hit it with sin taxes.

> The reason is that we let adults choose what to consume.

Do we let adults choose to consume hard drugs?

Do we let adults choose whether they want to wear seatbelts?

No, because adults are stupid too.

> If you go down the path of banning social media feeds because they might be addictive, prepare for the floodgates of banning alcohol, porn, cigarettes, and more.

This does not align with what is happening in reality. Banning addictive things is nothing new. We've banned hard drugs for ages. It did not result in an unstoppable wave of bans.

> Does anyone else find it weird to see so many comments on sites like Hacker News that are in favor of governments regulating what adults can consume? Years ago sites like HN and Slashdot were universally in agreement about internet freedoms, but now it's common to see people inviting government control of the internet for adults. I don't get it.

At least to me internet freedoms are largely about maintaining the freedoms we've already set in the offline world. Spying on people's activity in their home is illegal. Spying on people's activity on their home systems (e.g. their tablet or PC) should be illegal, too. It's about maintaining the rights we already know. It's not about creating new rights, which allow for anything and everything.

Yes and that's what I want. A law that allows adults to choose whether to allow algorithmic feeds or turn them off. Companies should be legally required to give you that off switch.

This is how we do all laws, good lord. Banned for under-18s without parental consent, a choice for adults. Why you chose to read the take you did from my comment is beyond me.

The current internet and app landscape are the largest honey pot mental health crisis this planet has ever seen

If I was President I’d turn off the internet for 3 days and watch everyone melt

Reply on news.ycombinator.com