Great example, no, they are not.

There is a special tax on sugary drinks in France to curb sales and distributors have been banned from schools years ago precisely to limit the health impact.

What a terrible and entirely unconvincing argument.

"$unhealthy_thing is not subject to restrictions, therefore $other_unhealthy_thing should also not be"? lol. lmao, even.

Should we let children purchase cigarettes? Alcohol? Cannabis? Cocaine?

The BMI epidemic in America tells me maybe we should ban sugary drinks.

At some point, society draws a line between what it deems acceptable and what it does not. In two generations it is virtually assured that we/our grandchildren will look back on Facebook and TikTok the way we currently look at the tobacco industry. The way I know this is because the CEOs don't let their kids dogfood their products. Famously, Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids have an iPhone. Mark and Cecilia didn't let their kids use socials.

These are bad products designed to be deliberately addictive, and it turns out they're really only good at making people feel shitty and giving teen girls eating disorders.

Nobody would accept that we let criminals and pedophiles run schools.

Meanwhile there is this digital world that children reside in that is a completely lawless anarchy...

Something will have to be done about it one way or another.

Online isn't school. The comparison is offensive.

Your kids don't need to be online like they need to be in school. To suggest that they do is utterly ludicrous.

It's a disgrace.

When parents can't take care of their children the government takes over. Children are the greatest treasure of society and our entire system revolves around teaching and protecting them. The disgrace is giving tech companies one iota of power.

Yes yes, the specter of the boogeyman. Your outrage and arguments are tired.

Global capitalists are bad, governments that prop them up are worst. The only thing worst than that are the useful scared people pleading for these policies evoking this kind of fear and rhetoric.

Goodness it's almost as if society is imperfect.

Righ! And the best place to start fixing it a cancerogen France is famous for, which is wine. I guess that will be the second thing the french parliament going to do - banning the sale of wine. Health is very important, I guess everybody is in agreement with that.

Wine is a carcinogen? Does not look like it from this meta-analysis.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10507274/

Yeah in France you can get wine for lunch in the company canteen even. Imagine sitting down with your boss for lunch, opening a bottle of wine lol. But there that flies.

In America you go out with your boss and shoot up the place. Different strokes for different folks.

I'm not American :) And I wasn't looking down on the French practice, in fact I like the more relaxed attitude.

But I did want to point out that wine is kinda sacred there. I worked for a company where the CEO was a teetotaler and he tried to ban it from the canteen and caused a huge riot lol.

The sale of wine to minors is already illegal in the USA, bro.

I'm beginning to get the sense that the old adage about how it's difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding it is applicable to you.

Happy new year.