You realise children can legally do neither, right?
Government should be in the business of improving citizens lives. As another commenter said, left to their own devices companies would still be using leaded paint everywhere if it was 1c cheaper per gallon. I’ve grown very tired of this “any regulation is bad regulation” viewpoint, it doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
But we don't need the government to protect people from Facebook!
For instance, you could propose a regulation that says that any type of gambling with any wager, whether using real currency or fictional, for any age range, should be illegal. I think most people would consider that to be unreasonable.
You could also propose a regulation that says that companies cannot collect personal data on individuals for advertising purposes unless that individual is directly engaged with that company as a customer. This would hopefully render illegal Facebook's "shadow profiles"[1] that collect data on non-customers. While more controversial, I'd say that this would still be supported by most people you'd meet, while still falling into the category of "the government protecting people from Facebook".
Details of regulation matter, a lot.
[1] https://www.howtogeek.com/768652/what-are-facebook-shadow-pr...
The evidence that Facebook harms people is extremely iffy.
Says who exactly ?
The evidence for social media harming people is highly disputed and, I would say, largely unconvincing. For one thing, it relies on self-reported subjective well-being.
This is sneering, where you don't respond to a particular poster's point, but instead attack an unrelated (and even fictional) group of people based on something you don't like, or an attitude that you subjectively perceive to be common. Precisely zero people in this thread have made the claim that "any regulation is bad regulation", and in fact the person you responded to specifically called out drugs and gambling as things that they would be open to regulating.
Sneering is against the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), boring, unenlightening, not intellectually gratifying, and degrades the quality of the site. Please don't do it.
Ctrl-F for "sneer" - or just read the guidelines, as you should have before posting, and clearly did not:
> Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> I for one find dismissing a thought by pointing to the big board of rules to be boring, unenlightening and not intellectually gratifying. But that’s just me.
You did not read the rest of my comment, then, which pointed out why sneering is bad. Or maybe you did, because you quoted it, but then chose to forget what you quoted?
Separate from the enumerated rules, it's pretty obvious why this kind of behavior - both in your original comment, and your reply - is generally anti-intellectual, and better suited for Reddit than HN.
If you're not going to follow the guidelines, and going to act in such a hostile and shallow manner, then perhaps you should go somewhere else.
> [EDIT: removed a snarky reply, need to remind myself not to engage with off topic trolling]
Reminding you of the HN guidelines that you repeatedly and blatantly violate, and calling out your hostile, dishonest, emotionally manipulative, and anti-intellectual behavior, is not trolling.
The only one engaging in off-topic trolling, by bringing up fictional positions that nobody adopted, is you.
