Social media platforms are going to change in New York following new law

A new law that has just been passed will force social media platforms to display warnings across New York. The law only applies to social media apps in New York, and the warnings will not be required outside the region.

Social media platforms face new law in New York

New York governor Kathy Hochul has announced a new law, under which social media platforms will have to display warnings about their algorithm’s harmful effects on users’ mental health. Platforms that utilize infinite scrolling, autoplay functionality, and display curated content in users’ feeds will be required to display these warnings in New York.

Your favorite apps fall under this category

Apps like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok fall under the category of social media platforms being targeted by the new law. All of them, including many other social media apps, will now have to let their New York-based users know just how their algorithms are bad for their mental health.

Facebook, for example, might have to specify how its algorithm prioritizes displaying controversial content to keep users interacting with the platform. TikTok, meanwhile, is practically destroying people’s attention spans with its focus on extremely short form content.

Instagram, which is owned by Meta (which runs Facebook), uses somewhat similar tactics as mentioned above. However, Instagram also allows users to engage in a lot less curated discussions, which often devolve into hateful rhetoric. Whether X, formerly known as Twitter, will also be subject to the new law isn’t clear just yet, though I’d wager that it will.

An excellent move that should see widespread adoption

In my personal opinion, this is a brilliant idea. While Australia might have gone a bit too far by banning social media for children entirely, this law lets young users actually know how they are being manipulated.

Similar initiatives should be introduced across the country, and ideally the whole world, in my opinion. Some social media platforms go a lot further than just curated hate content: Reddit, in my eyes, needs a major overhaul, as censorship on the site is completely out of control.

However, for now, I think that Kathy Hochul’s move is one to be applauded, no matter how old that might make me sound.

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