> Hochul compared the social media labels to warnings on other products like tobacco, where they communicate the risk of cancer, or plastic packaging, where they warn of the risk of suffocation for small children.
Great. I’m sure this will be just as effective as California Prop 65 cancer warnings.
Research says, apparently, that Prop 65 has actually been affective.
> The researchers analyzed concentrations of 11 chemicals placed on the Proposition 65 warning list and monitored by the CDC between 1999 and 2016. They included several types of phthalates, chemicals used to make plastics flexible; chloroform, a toxic byproduct from disinfecting water with chlorine; and toluene, a hazardous substance found in vehicle exhaust.
> They found that the majority of samples had significantly lower concentrations of these chemicals after their listing. But the levels didn’t just decline in California, they fell nationwide. [1]
Unfortunately, the NIH website [2] where the study is hosted is no longer operational. I don't think certain people want to support scientific inquiry. Maybe someone else can find the study text?
My initial question would be why they those to analyze those 11 specific chemicals, out of the 900+ that received the warning, and whether the same results would be seen with any of the other 889+ chemicals, or were those 11 specifically cherry picked.
Was that because of Prop 65, though? The day-to-day effect seems to be alert fatigue and people ignoring the warnings because they're everywhere.
I read the links to find the proposed mechanism (NIH link is dead btw), and it says that businesses pre-emptively reformulated to avoid having the label, but the LA Times story also says this is a mixed bag, often resulting in a switch to less-tested, possibly unsafe substitutes simply because they weren't on the list.
>>But swapping one chemical for an unlisted substitute has sometimes resulted in its own consequences.
>>For example, when bisphenol A, an ingredient in plastics, was listed in 2013, chemical concentrations in blood and urine samples subsequently fell by 15%. However, that was followed by a 20% rise in bisphenol S — a closely related chemical also linked with reproductive toxicity.
Yes but I think outweighed by the overall cost and harm of putting up little warning signs in every restaurant, coffee shop, parking garage, and grocery store in the state
Labels on products designed to be addictive like modern social media isn’t a silver bullet but it’s an important first start.
You’re right though that it’s going to take far bigger things like antitrust action and fining companies for making misleading statements about the health consequences and purposes of their products.
Another way this problem can be attacked is by changing the cultural perspective around working at companies like Meta.
There was a time where it was socially acceptable to work at s tobacco company. People would proudly tell their family that they work in marketing for tobacco companies but now? When have you ever heard someone tell you they work for big tobacco?
If the government mandated that social media had to have pictures of neckbeard nests in people’s feeds with warnings that this could happen to you with repeated social media use I bet the people who work at Meta would be a laughing stock in their social circles which would go a long ways to disrupting the pipeline of people willing to destroy our society for a quick buck.
Every time I look at the evidence, I end up finding that social media improves mental health for teens overall. Is there a new study that motivated this or are we still misinterpreting statistics?
Parent of young adults (recent former teens) here.
Anecdotal, but I can assure you that no-one in their cohort feels that social media makes a positive contribution to their mental health. Neither did their teachers. The ones I know of tend to try to actively avoid it.
I know of older adults (late 20s / early 30s) who have had similarly negative experiences with anxiety and addictive engagement.
Not insinuating anything, but when it comes to such a hot topic, and such a hot take, maybe you should disclose you worked at Meta (Instagram) for 3 years. Again, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, god forbid. Studies usually disclose source of funding and sources of conflict, and people disclose owning stocks when discussing economy, it seems like a good idea.
I didn't work there for 3 years (1 year), and I'm not publishing a study.
Should people who post anti social media sentiment disclose that they've never worked on it, have never run experiments on well being, and have never looked at the data?
For example here is a recent widely cited study that did not find a statistically significant link between Facebook/Instagram and mental health outcomes, broadly miscited as having found an effect: https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/briefs/ifs-gallup-...
They did claim to find a very small link between TikTok/YouTube and mental health, but this seems to defy the narrative of "social" media being the culprit. YouTube was not significant if you adjust for multiple hypotheses, only TikTok
Results: The majority of studies linked social media use to adverse mental health outcomes, particularly depression and anxiety. However, the relationship was complex, with evidence suggesting that problematic use and passive consumption of social media were most strongly associated with adverse effects. In contrast, some studies highlighted positive aspects, including enhanced social support and reduced isolation. The mental health impact of social media use, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, was mixed, with the full range of neutral, negative, and positive effects reported.
> Social media platforms with infinite scrolling, auto-play and algorithmic feeds will be required to display warning labels about their potential harm to young users’ mental health under a new law, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Friday.
> Legislation S4505/A5346, under the chapter amendment, requires social media platforms that offer addictive feeds, auto play or infinite scroll to post warning labels on their platforms.
§ 1520. DEFINITIONS. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS ARTICLE, THE FOLLOWING
TERMS SHALL HAVE THE FOLLOWING MEANINGS:
1. "ADDICTIVE FEED" SHALL MEAN AS DEFINED IN SUBDIVISION ONE OF
SECTION FIFTEEN HUNDRED OF THIS CHAPTER.
2. "ADDICTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM" SHALL MEAN A WEBSITE, ONLINE
SERVICE, ONLINE APPLICATION, OR MOBILE APPLICATION THAT PRIMARILY SERVES
AS A MEDIUM FOR COVERED USERS TO INTERACT WITH MEDIA GENERATED BY OTHER
USERS AND WHICH OFFERS OR PROVIDES COVERED USERS AN ADDICTIVE FEED, PUSH
NOTIFICATIONS, AUTOPLAY, INFINITE SCROLL, AND/OR LIKE COUNTS AS A
SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE SERVICES PROVIDED BY SUCH WEBSITE, ONLINE
SERVICE, ONLINE APPLICATION, OR MOBILE APPLICATION. "ADDICTIVE SOCIAL
MEDIA PLATFORM" SHALL NOT INCLUDE ANY SUCH SERVICE OR APPLICATION WHICH
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL DETERMINES OFFERS THE FEATURES DESCRIBED HEREIN FOR
A VALID PURPOSE UNRELATED TO PROLONGING USE OF SUCH PLATFORM.
...
7. "LIKE COUNTS" SHALL MEAN THE QUANTIFICATION AND PUBLIC DISPLAY OF
POSITIVE VOTES, SUCH AS BUT NOT LIMITED TO THOSE EXPRESSED VIA A HEART
OR THUMBS-UP ICON, ATTACHED TO A PIECE OF MEDIA GENERATED BY A COVERED
USER.
(note that there is no public display of positive votes on HN)
HN doesn't have push notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, or like counts.
"Addictive feed" is poorly defined.
---
Edit: The harmful nature of social media is something that HN has recognized for well over a decade. There is a feature "noprocrast" to help manage this if you do have this problem.
7 Nov: Anti-procrastination features
Like email, social news sites can be dangerously addictive. So the latest version of Hacker News has a feature to let you limit your use of the site. There are three new fields in your profile, noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway. (You can edit your profile by clicking on your username.) Noprocrast is turned off by default. If you turn it on by setting it to "yes," you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts over at zero.
I'd personally consider it infinite scroll as you can scroll through as many pages of stories as you want. There's only the slight friction of having to click the 'next page' button every now and then. In an app like Instagram or whatever, you'd also have the friction of swiping your thumb on the screen to see more. They seem pretty identical to me.
The summary and justification sections help set the intent of the bill, but they don't define the law itself.
Those uses are:
Section two of this bill adds a new Article 45-A to General Business Law
to require addictive social media platforms which feature predatory
features such as algorithmic feeds, push notifications, autoplay, infi-
nite scroll, and/or like counts as a significant part of the provision
of their service to post warning labels for all users upon access to the
platform. The bill features a series of specific exemptions for certain
types of notifications that fall beyond the scope of the bill (i.e.
those explicitly requested by a user or which are deployed for civic
communication). More broadly, the bill also exempts any feature which is
determined by the Attorney General via regulation to be offered for a
valid purpose unrelated to prolonging use of the addictive social media
platform.
...
... Additionally, as this bill covers only social media
platforms that deploy addictive features such as algorithmic feeds, push
notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, and like counts, any platform
not wishing to display a warning label could simply limit their use of
these features.
The text of the law, however, does not define "algorithmic feed" (sorting by date post could be considered "an algorithm" by some).
"[S]uch as algorithmic feeds" in the description and justification remains undefined in the text of the bill itself.
If you consider "feeds" to be the home page, ask hn, etc. then afaik content is determined by user submission after spam/abuse filtering, and all users see the same content. Article position is largely determined by user votes, with some ageing. Again, everyone sees the same ordering (unless they choose to hid le articles).
Hard to see how this can be interpreted as "algorithmic".
It's hard to see it as anything but algorithmic considering that an algorithm is deciding what you see. It doesn't matter if everyone is also seeing the same thing.
By the definitional you are using pretty much every feed presented on a website is an algorithmic feed, making the term "algorithmic feed" useless since it could simply be replaced with "feed".
What "algorithmic feed" means in most discussion and publications is a feed that is personalized for the individual users based on their known or inferred interests and their past interactions.
The algorithm that is deciding what you see is simply <things submitted by other humans> + <voting on those things by other humans>. There's no per-user content customisation and profiling to drive engagement. And hn has an optional "no procrastination" feature that is provided to mitigate excessive engagement.
"The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
"Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action."
Pretty obvious and vague overview. Obviously the weights are the important part that is missing.
I don't know why you're trying to argue that this isn't an algorithmically driven social news feed website with an addictive homepage. It's exactly what the NY state law is targeting.
HN is social media and I think most people recognize that.
It's just that HN is a social media that respects your time and doesn't try to get you addicted. For example, HN has a very useful 'noprocrast' feature and one of the co-founders, pg, has openly worried about HN's addictiveness in the past [0].
So while HN is social media, I feel like it's qualitatively different than other platforms.
Every forum I can remember shows the most popular threads first. Even 4chan does that with thread bumping, the most engaged-with threads sort to the top. Given the hyperbole of the times, that counts as "finely tuning their addictive homepage feed."
Hacker News, like Reddit, is both a forum and a link aggregator. It has features which are designed to influence you and to be addictive. And I promise you that people are as addicted to HN as others are to Facebook, Twitter, TikTok etc.
That's what I meant too. PHPBB forums and the like had plenty of features that would be considered "addictive" in the modern climate, as well as "algorithmic" feeds.
They certainly could be categorized the same way. I don't think they will only because the political will isn't there and such forums aren't popular enough to matter. But if regulation of social media causes those forums to resurge in popularity then that might change.
The title made me think NY would be running a mental health ad campiagn but the messages would only be visible on big social media platforms.. Tbh that seems a more likely interpretation of the title in 2025.
Also LLMs. Also television. Also smart phones, particularly those. Also books, the wrong ones can really cripple the intelects. Also talking to children, they can be so cruel. And adults too. Also math and chess, they can send people right over the edge. It's astonishing how many mental health threats are insufficiently labeled, no wonder people are so messed up.
ya we should take health warnings off of smokes. And alcohol. Also we should get rid of mandatory seat belts. And restrictions on lead. And asbestos. I mean we dont want to coddle people and remove personal choice right?
You dont need to become hysterical, just look at the data. There's loads coming to light about the deleterious health effects of social media, that's not the case for books.
> Hochul compared the social media labels to warnings on other products like tobacco, where they communicate the risk of cancer, or plastic packaging, where they warn of the risk of suffocation for small children.
Great. I’m sure this will be just as effective as California Prop 65 cancer warnings.
Research says, apparently, that Prop 65 has actually been affective.
> The researchers analyzed concentrations of 11 chemicals placed on the Proposition 65 warning list and monitored by the CDC between 1999 and 2016. They included several types of phthalates, chemicals used to make plastics flexible; chloroform, a toxic byproduct from disinfecting water with chlorine; and toluene, a hazardous substance found in vehicle exhaust.
> They found that the majority of samples had significantly lower concentrations of these chemicals after their listing. But the levels didn’t just decline in California, they fell nationwide. [1]
Unfortunately, the NIH website [2] where the study is hosted is no longer operational. I don't think certain people want to support scientific inquiry. Maybe someone else can find the study text?
[1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-11/study-d...
[2] https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP13956
My initial question would be why they those to analyze those 11 specific chemicals, out of the 900+ that received the warning, and whether the same results would be seen with any of the other 889+ chemicals, or were those 11 specifically cherry picked.
Was that because of Prop 65, though? The day-to-day effect seems to be alert fatigue and people ignoring the warnings because they're everywhere.
I read the links to find the proposed mechanism (NIH link is dead btw), and it says that businesses pre-emptively reformulated to avoid having the label, but the LA Times story also says this is a mixed bag, often resulting in a switch to less-tested, possibly unsafe substitutes simply because they weren't on the list.
>>But swapping one chemical for an unlisted substitute has sometimes resulted in its own consequences.
>>For example, when bisphenol A, an ingredient in plastics, was listed in 2013, chemical concentrations in blood and urine samples subsequently fell by 15%. However, that was followed by a 20% rise in bisphenol S — a closely related chemical also linked with reproductive toxicity.
Late edit: looks like you had already mentioned the link being dead, sorry.
Most of the labeled chemicals aren't harmful, so decreasing concentrations is not a good thing
What about the outcome of decreasing the concentrations of chemicals that are harmful? Is that a positive result?
Yes but I think outweighed by the overall cost and harm of putting up little warning signs in every restaurant, coffee shop, parking garage, and grocery store in the state
Labels on products designed to be addictive like modern social media isn’t a silver bullet but it’s an important first start.
You’re right though that it’s going to take far bigger things like antitrust action and fining companies for making misleading statements about the health consequences and purposes of their products.
Another way this problem can be attacked is by changing the cultural perspective around working at companies like Meta.
There was a time where it was socially acceptable to work at s tobacco company. People would proudly tell their family that they work in marketing for tobacco companies but now? When have you ever heard someone tell you they work for big tobacco?
If the government mandated that social media had to have pictures of neckbeard nests in people’s feeds with warnings that this could happen to you with repeated social media use I bet the people who work at Meta would be a laughing stock in their social circles which would go a long ways to disrupting the pipeline of people willing to destroy our society for a quick buck.
"When have you ever heard someone tell you they work for big tobacco?"
Go to southern Virginia or North Carolina.
Great! I'm sure they'll be as effective as tobacco warnings are!
Every time I look at the evidence, I end up finding that social media improves mental health for teens overall. Is there a new study that motivated this or are we still misinterpreting statistics?
Parent of young adults (recent former teens) here.
Anecdotal, but I can assure you that no-one in their cohort feels that social media makes a positive contribution to their mental health. Neither did their teachers. The ones I know of tend to try to actively avoid it.
I know of older adults (late 20s / early 30s) who have had similarly negative experiences with anxiety and addictive engagement.
My sister does, who is sitting next to me talking to me about this
My alcoholic uncle says that alcohol is actually good for him too.
Is anecdote only acceptable evidence when it agrees with what you already believe?
Why does this apply to me but not to you?
It doesn't, I think both anecdotes are not useful for understanding what's really happening
My apologies. I thought we were in disagreement.
Social "science" be social science.
Not insinuating anything, but when it comes to such a hot topic, and such a hot take, maybe you should disclose you worked at Meta (Instagram) for 3 years. Again, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, god forbid. Studies usually disclose source of funding and sources of conflict, and people disclose owning stocks when discussing economy, it seems like a good idea.
I didn't work there for 3 years (1 year), and I'm not publishing a study.
Should people who post anti social media sentiment disclose that they've never worked on it, have never run experiments on well being, and have never looked at the data?
My bad, I did the math wrong, 2019-2021 is indeed about 1-2 years.
Disclosures are necessary only when something happened, not when something didn't happened.
what evidence have you found that in?
For example here is a recent widely cited study that did not find a statistically significant link between Facebook/Instagram and mental health outcomes, broadly miscited as having found an effect: https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/briefs/ifs-gallup-...
They did claim to find a very small link between TikTok/YouTube and mental health, but this seems to defy the narrative of "social" media being the culprit. YouTube was not significant if you adjust for multiple hypotheses, only TikTok
A meta-analysis> https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12108867/
Results: The majority of studies linked social media use to adverse mental health outcomes, particularly depression and anxiety. However, the relationship was complex, with evidence suggesting that problematic use and passive consumption of social media were most strongly associated with adverse effects. In contrast, some studies highlighted positive aspects, including enhanced social support and reduced isolation. The mental health impact of social media use, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, was mixed, with the full range of neutral, negative, and positive effects reported.
Will HN add the label too?
> Social media platforms with infinite scrolling, auto-play and algorithmic feeds will be required to display warning labels about their potential harm to young users’ mental health under a new law, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Friday.
https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-signs-legis...
> Legislation S4505/A5346, under the chapter amendment, requires social media platforms that offer addictive feeds, auto play or infinite scroll to post warning labels on their platforms.
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S4505
... (note that there is no public display of positive votes on HN)HN doesn't have push notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, or like counts.
"Addictive feed" is poorly defined.
---
Edit: The harmful nature of social media is something that HN has recognized for well over a decade. There is a feature "noprocrast" to help manage this if you do have this problem.
From 2010:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492902
> auto play or infinite scroll
I don't think HN has either of these.
I'd personally consider it infinite scroll as you can scroll through as many pages of stories as you want. There's only the slight friction of having to click the 'next page' button every now and then. In an app like Instagram or whatever, you'd also have the friction of swiping your thumb on the screen to see more. They seem pretty identical to me.
> algorithmic feeds
It does have these
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S4505
"Addictive feed" is used, but it's circularly defined.
"Algorithmic feed" doesn't appear in the text.
It appears in section 1 of the PDF of the bill where it is explaining the legislative intent.
The summary and justification sections help set the intent of the bill, but they don't define the law itself.
Those uses are:
The text of the law, however, does not define "algorithmic feed" (sorting by date post could be considered "an algorithm" by some)."[S]uch as algorithmic feeds" in the description and justification remains undefined in the text of the bill itself.
> > algorithmic feeds
> It does have these
If you consider "feeds" to be the home page, ask hn, etc. then afaik content is determined by user submission after spam/abuse filtering, and all users see the same content. Article position is largely determined by user votes, with some ageing. Again, everyone sees the same ordering (unless they choose to hid le articles).
Hard to see how this can be interpreted as "algorithmic".
It's hard to see it as anything but algorithmic considering that an algorithm is deciding what you see. It doesn't matter if everyone is also seeing the same thing.
By the definitional you are using pretty much every feed presented on a website is an algorithmic feed, making the term "algorithmic feed" useless since it could simply be replaced with "feed".
What "algorithmic feed" means in most discussion and publications is a feed that is personalized for the individual users based on their known or inferred interests and their past interactions.
The algorithm that is deciding what you see is simply <things submitted by other humans> + <voting on those things by other humans>. There's no per-user content customisation and profiling to drive engagement. And hn has an optional "no procrastination" feature that is provided to mitigate excessive engagement.
We don't know what the algorithm is. But it's clearly more sophisticated than just vote counts.
It's an algorithmic feed.
From the FAQ [1]:
"How are stories ranked?
"The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
"Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action."
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
Pretty obvious and vague overview. Obviously the weights are the important part that is missing.
I don't know why you're trying to argue that this isn't an algorithmically driven social news feed website with an addictive homepage. It's exactly what the NY state law is targeting.
Well, no. Upvoting a certain story doesn’t change the homepage to match it to similar stories.
I'm sure this will be shot down as being just as unconstitutional as when Texas tried this stunt with porn sites.
Thank God. Social Media is a parasite. The more people re-learn to live without it, the better off society will be!
these sorts of comments always make me laugh considering where they are posted.
in before: "HN isn't social media!"
HN is social media and I think most people recognize that.
It's just that HN is a social media that respects your time and doesn't try to get you addicted. For example, HN has a very useful 'noprocrast' feature and one of the co-founders, pg, has openly worried about HN's addictiveness in the past [0].
So while HN is social media, I feel like it's qualitatively different than other platforms.
[0] https://paulgraham.com/hackernews.html
But that only demonstrates that it is addictive and everyone knows it. It's the exact kind of website that this New York state law is targeting.
It just seems like hn is very open about acknowledging that. They'll still very much be subject to the state law
That’s because HN isn’t social media. It’s a forum.
Since when did forums finely tuned their addictive homepage feed based on votes, comments, and overall "engagement".
This is a social media news feed-style website. Like Reddit, or old Digg.
Since always?
Every forum I can remember shows the most popular threads first. Even 4chan does that with thread bumping, the most engaged-with threads sort to the top. Given the hyperbole of the times, that counts as "finely tuning their addictive homepage feed."
Hacker News, like Reddit, is both a forum and a link aggregator. It has features which are designed to influence you and to be addictive. And I promise you that people are as addicted to HN as others are to Facebook, Twitter, TikTok etc.
Yes I agree that it is addictive, and will be subject to this NY state law.
When I think of "forum" I think of pre-Web 2.0/social media like PHP BB. I don't think they would be categorized the same way.
That's what I meant too. PHPBB forums and the like had plenty of features that would be considered "addictive" in the modern climate, as well as "algorithmic" feeds.
They certainly could be categorized the same way. I don't think they will only because the political will isn't there and such forums aren't popular enough to matter. But if regulation of social media causes those forums to resurge in popularity then that might change.
A parasite that turns its host into a zombie.
Don't fall for the illusion that major social media are somehow a modern agora. It is a personalized, individually tailored psyop.
Step 1
The title made me think NY would be running a mental health ad campiagn but the messages would only be visible on big social media platforms.. Tbh that seems a more likely interpretation of the title in 2025.
Reading the title, my mind immediately drifted to the thought that there should be mental health warnings for living in a place like New York.
“So, this is how democracy dies. With thunderous applause.”
You're kidding, right? Social media is democracy now? Health warnings are fascism?
Social Media is free speech. And it’s not fascism, is communism. Just as bad.
The Star Wars prequels are quotable in a serious context now?!???!?
Star Wars only ever had three movies. It'd be neat if they made some prequels though!
Also LLMs. Also television. Also smart phones, particularly those. Also books, the wrong ones can really cripple the intelects. Also talking to children, they can be so cruel. And adults too. Also math and chess, they can send people right over the edge. It's astonishing how many mental health threats are insufficiently labeled, no wonder people are so messed up.
Stop infantalizing us.
ya we should take health warnings off of smokes. And alcohol. Also we should get rid of mandatory seat belts. And restrictions on lead. And asbestos. I mean we dont want to coddle people and remove personal choice right?
You dont need to become hysterical, just look at the data. There's loads coming to light about the deleterious health effects of social media, that's not the case for books.
You seem unable to tell the difference between heroin and aspirin.
What's your point?
Aspirin comes with heavy health warnings (and social warnings that have been strongly influenced by the paracetamol/acetominiphin industry).
Heroin lacks the health warnings, and is recommended within the social group that accesses it?
I know of plenty of people that wouldn't touch Aspirin because of its dangers...