Image: The Verge AI
Summary
- Governor Hochul explains on a podcast that New York's social media and AI chatbot rules go further than Meta's settlement
- She signed a one-year pause on new data center construction in New York, though the interview doesn't spell out what happens once it expires
- Activist Cody Wilson is trying to get around the state's ban on 3D-printed gun parts by tweaking his files
New York's governor laid out her tech policy agenda on a podcast
New York Governor Kathy Hochul sat down with The Verge's podcast Decoder and worked through a whole slate of tech policy issues at once. In her conversation with host Nilay Patel, she touched on Meta's settlement limiting minors' social media use, New York's pause on data center construction, the state's ban on 3D-printed gun parts, and even surveillance cameras — all recent regulatory moves out of Albany. Coming during election season, the interview carried a dual message: crack down on tech, but keep courting the industry. The use of surveillance camera vendor Flock in New York City also came up briefly, though the excerpts released so far don't include any specifics on policy direction there.
A quick look at the regulations covered in the interview
| Regulatory area | Key points |
|---|---|
| Social media limits | 47-state settlement including Meta; bans late-night notifications for users under 18 |
| AI chatbots | Must disclose to minors that they're not talking to a real person |
| Data centers | One-year pause on new construction signed last July |
| 3D-printed guns | Ban on printing gun parts; activist attempting to get around it by editing files |
New York's rules go further than Meta's settlement
Governor Hochul voiced strong support for the recent settlement in which Meta agreed with 47 states, including New York, to restrict how minors use social media. Under that deal, Meta agreed to limit how users under 18 can use platforms like Instagram in certain ways. But Hochul said New York already has a stricter law on the books. State rules bar sending notifications to users under 18 between midnight and 6 a.m., restrict addictive algorithmic feeds, turn on privacy protections by default, and require age verification. The rules also cover AI chatbots aimed at minors, requiring a disclosure that tells users they're not talking to an actual person.
Patel pushed back, raising concerns that these kinds of rules could run into First Amendment issues around free speech. Hochul's response, given during the Decoder interview, was that "New York already has laws stricter than what Meta agreed to." Her reasoning: blocking notifications that disrupt teenagers' sleep isn't the same as restricting free speech.
A one-year pause on data centers — the real question is what comes next
Last July, Hochul signed a measure pausing new data center construction across New York for one year. The move came amid growing tension over data center buildouts and strain on the power grid, driven by surging electricity demand from the AI boom. Patel asked what conditions would need to be met before construction could resume once the pause lifts, but the specifics of that answer weren't included in the excerpts released so far.
Power supply bottlenecking AI infrastructure growth isn't a problem unique to New York.
A gun-parts printing ban, undone by a single file tweak
New York also enforces a law banning the 3D printing of gun parts. Activist Cody Wilson has gone head-to-head with that law. He runs the largest database of gun design files for 3D printing, and he's given a name — "Hochulization" — to his own process of tweaking those files to dodge New York's restrictions.
In plain terms, what Wilson does is make small edits to gun-part design files that the state law is meant to block, so the files technically fall outside the regulation's wording while still being able to produce the same parts. Rather than fighting the law in court, he's trying to prove — just by editing files — that the ban is technically full of holes. According to Patel, Hochul brought this up directly in the interview and pushed back on Wilson's claim right away.
Regulating tough while claiming the "No. 1 tech jobs" title
Even as she tightens regulation, Hochul claimed New York has overtaken California to become the top state for tech job creation nationwide. That stands in contrast to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has taken a more combative stance toward Big Tech companies like Amazon over labor practices. Hochul, by comparison, put the emphasis on protecting an ecosystem that supports innovation and new job growth. She also mentioned setting up a "Future Works Commission" to study which jobs are most vulnerable to AI-driven displacement and how workers in those roles could be retrained. She shared an anecdote about hand-drawing her governor's office org chart on a sticky note five years ago — and added that today, she'd probably just ask Claude or ChatGPT for advice on how to structure it.
Editor's take
What makes this interview interesting is that one person delivered both messages — crackdown and courtship — in the same sitting. Hochul boasted about laws tougher than Meta's settlement while making sure to note that New York has passed California as the top state for tech jobs. That's a sign state-level AI and platform regulation has become both a vote-getter and a pitch to attract business, all at once. With federal AI legislation stuck in neutral, states have spent years writing their own rules while companies tweak products state by state to comply — and this interview is just the latest snapshot of that ongoing pattern.
The most notable thread here is Wilson's "Hochulization." It's another reminder that the technology for dodging a law almost always moves faster than the law itself. Regulate one gun file, and a new version appears; regulate that one, and another follows — a pattern that's likely to repeat in areas like AI-generated content watermarking or deepfake detection rules. For any company building AI chatbot regulations or content filtering policies for minors here at home, the lesson is to check whether a rule can be technically routed around before assuming compliance is enough.
Practically speaking, platform companies operating in the U.S. now face the burden of designing age verification, notification time limits, and chatbot disclosures separately for each state. As more states adopt rules stricter than Meta's settlement, the way an app behaves is likely to keep fragmenting — turning features on or off depending on which state line a user crosses.
In the weeks ahead, the next chapter in this story will likely play out around the specific conditions New York attaches to lifting its data center pause, and whatever new file version comes next from Cody Wilson's camp.
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