Cigarettes (nicotine products) are easy to identify. What is social media? Why would I want to acquire and provide an ID just to comment on HN? In the case of social media, there is not a well enough defined product to ban.

Big tech has had decades to self-police, and I don’t believe for a second they didn’t know that at some point they would be forced to if they didn’t do so.

This is just the adults in the room drawing the line.

I'm really sick of this silly comparison.

Stores don't require you to present an ID to enter them. They don't record that ID, add it to a pile of other data they've collected about you, and sell that information. In short, the privacy concerns are vastly different.

Furthermore, nicotine products are much more easily defined than social media, as another commenter points out.

Perhaps it could be made illegal for companies to use your data that way, the same way your health data is protected. I could get behind that effort.

That's the whole point then right? It's whole another policing and maintenance burden created to be funded by tax payers money without actually achieving anything useful at all.

Do you have kids? I'm glad mine can't just walk into a store and buy cigarettes. It's a pretty strong deterrent.

Which was only done federally _after_ strenuous public efforts to prove they were harmful to _everyone_.

Good luck.