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Start free trial →Decoder with Nilay Patel · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · August 2026
Hochul, on Decoder, defends New York's restrictions on how tech companies treat minors and on 3D-printed guns, saying regulation is not her first position. Host Nilay Patel had pressed her on whether the rules amount to government monitoring of what people do on their computers.
I understand the anxiety around this. I truly do.
But you see how it's all the same, right?
But there's, I'm not looking at, I'm not having complete regulation of someone's use of their computer. I mean, that's an overstatement. It just is. We have a very narrow, specific purpose and a government objective to protect young people because the companies have gone too far. If they had put these controls in place, when the data was starting to show them that this is harmful to kids and they stopped letting their own kids use this, but let everybody else be subjected to this, knowing the harms, that's when government has to step in and regulate business. We don't do it as a first position. My view is more hands-off. Innovate, do good things, sell your product. Great. This is called capitalism in America. But when you go too far, or a 3D printer that I said, those are great, until I find out they're making guns that can kill people from them or bail to thwart, convert a Glock. Maybe it's a legal Glock that you have registered to you. That's great. But you can get this little piece of plastic that's the size of a Lego and insert that, and all of a sudden it…
Sure. I'm just connecting the dot between I want to use my printer in some way and there's a connection to the government that says yes or no and how people feel about technology like Flock, where I want to drive my car too fast in the highway and an automated license plate reader is going to track…
abused, that has to stop. Sure.
The CEO of Flock, he recently said to a lot of people, including The Verge, that he was wrong to assume that the regulatory process would provide protections for civil liberties. He assumed that state and local governments would provide controls for Flock to prevent things like cops oversearching…