That's why I'd get a tattoo on my chest, if necessary, saying "Smoker!". I know that most of the price of tobacco is insurance for medical treatments. Not Medicare, as I'm not in the US, but similar. I am OK with tattooing "DO NOT STABILIZE OR CARE FOR AT ALL - SMOKER !!!1".

> Nicotine is also notoriously addictive, which weakens the "my choice" argument.

I am an adult human who participates in society and has chosen to smoke. Please treat me as an adult who has made a (bad) decision and is willing to suffer the consequences.

> sugary drinks... nanny state

Same with any drug.

> hard drugs...

People who abuse hard drugs to the point where we need to save them or others from them are most often uneducated or poor (and living in a poor neighborhoods, with all that it brings). Believe it or not, I know several people with PhDs in things like physics and biology who regularly take "hard" and/or "soft" drugs besides alcohol and nicotine. Only one needed intervention after ~10 years and it was because of pre-existing psychological issues that led him to abuse the drugs. I and lots of people I know who lead normal lives can list more 3- or 4-letter abbreviations of stuff we've tried than a HN comment will let us fill. Or maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, not sure, but you get the point.

If you look at a poor neighborhood, you'll see a lot more people with drug problems. Not because richer people don't do drugs, but because it's not an escape plan, it's not some random impure thing you get and because it's done within a safe place. It's a social issue, not a drug issue. Work on solving poverty and education, not on making us drug users feel like criminals for trying new stuff or on making our drugs more expensive. Whether it's legal like alcohol or nicotine, or illegal a psychedelic, a benzo, weed, an opioid, a dissociative or anything else, it's a drug. I am an adult. Let me experience my adulthood like I want to. You don't take drugs and that's fine, but please understand that you have no fucking idea what you're missing if you're doing it correctly. Literally anything you've likely experienced, like romantic relationships, climbing mountains, orgasms and so on, is categorically and qualitatively different from the amazing things you can experience on various drugs.

I don't get why this addon isn't included in Firefox to begin with. Maybe because it doesn't just work only on standard HTML5 video files, but has support for specific sites and their players, too? But I've seen several updates on Firefox (not about the addon) that are along the lines of "solved perf issues on $site". So it's not like Firefox is trying to be site-agnostic.

In a non-adversarial political context where we trust the government and the future ones, sure, but I think without any strong guardrails, we could enact a law that's good today, but will be exploited in the future.

For targeting minors with any kind of political speech - I'd love it if it wasn't legal. But that brings its own can of worms. There's enough discussion on HN on the implications of age verification, whether on how it's done technically (privacy-preserving or not (ZKP or just shady 3rd parties); FOSS or not; on the ISP, OS or app level, etc.) and whether the mere precedent could trigger additional issues down the road.

Anyway, I'd love a society where everything is perfect, but I'm afraid of what might actually happen. With a benevolent god as a permanent ruler, I'd be happy with 100% prosecution rate against all kinds of littering, hate speech and whatnot, but in reality random crimes are easier to evade than a law passed down by a malevolent government, so I'm strongly against any kind of overreach. (Because the law tomorrow could be one we must evade if we want to resist an unethical government). Someone will likely chime in with "but complete and massive overreach has never happened so far", to which I'd reply - we're close to the point where technology will let the ones in power grab that power absolutely and forever if we them grab too much in the beginning.

As for the IR idea, I wonder if there's something like a crowdfunding/crowdsourcing site for ideas where the person who had the idea doesn't really want to do it, but leaves it open to others to try. You said you "don't really have the budget to try it out", but let's say even if you had the money, it wouldn't be a priority for you, as you're not an expert or you have better things to do or whatever. Is there a place to just shout ideas into and see if any market-oriented entity would take it upon themselves to try doing it? Besides forums full of ideas like "tinder but for X" and such crap? Because, imagine if your idea really is a great one. A couple hours from now it would be buried in HN.

Can you elaborate, give some ideas, examples, etc.? What metrics? How can you define them in a consistent, safe way?

If the idea is to make everyone be healthy, live as long as possible and be productive for as long as possible, why not ban dangerous sports, too? I'm "the government" for my dog and I don't let him do anything dangerous or stupid, but he's a dog and we're people. With the supposed free will and agency we all like.

What if I didn't say anything bad about a race or a sex, but said:

> I have coworkers that pester with me with their small talk about the weather every time I see them. I hate those fucking cockroaches.

That's in bad taste, sure, but should it be regulated? You may know I obviously don't hate-hate them (they're just annoying, but most of them are good people) or actually consider them cockroach-like in any meaningful aspect (they're obviously people, but with annoying tendencies). But would a regulator know the difference? What about a malicious regulator who gets paid by (ok, this is a silly example, but bear with me) the weather-talking coworker lobby to censor me? In many not-so-silly examples a regulator could silence anyone for anything (politics, sex, drugs, ethics), as long as it uses a bad word or says anything negative about anyone. I don't want to live in such a society. That much power would be abused sooner or later.

I'm fine with doing something, but the current "something" seems slippery.

> Banning racist and sexist content is not a slippery slope. It's just banning racist and sexist content, slope is only slippery because the salivating mouths of these social platforms grease them.

But what is "racist", exactly? See why I think it's a slippery slope and why it's ill-defined:

1. We could agree that "Let's go out and kill/enslave all the $race/$gender" is racist, but that's bad if we switch $race to any group, as it's speech that incites violence.

2. What about "$race is genetically inferior in a way (less intelligent, less athletic, more prone to $bad_behavior)"? I honestly think most differences in race/ethnicity is due to environmental factors, but what if there actually are difference in intelligence or anything like that? Should we ban speech that discusses that? Black people win running races and are great at basketball. They're prone to certain diseases, as are Caucasians or Asians. So would you ban discussing that? Or would you ban blindly asserting that $race is $Y without some sort of proof?

3. What about statements like "There are way more male bus drivers because X"? Or "men are better at Y, but women are better at Z"?

What do you think the definition of racism and sexism in this context should be? I think the line is where we incite violence towards a group, but not about discussing differences that may or may not be true.

> Also, I don't think people are advocating censorship, they are advocating not promoting assholes. You can have your little blog and be racist on it all you want, but let's not give these people equivalent of nukes for communication.

I think restricting a platform (or anyone or anything) from promoting someone IS censorship. If it's not censored, why shouldn't I be able to promote it? This honestly feels disingenuous - like "we pretend that the racist isn't censored and can have his little blog, but it's illegal to promote his little blog".

So yeah, this comment really reminded me to not light up whenever and "try my best" to walk a few meters away, but to really think if I'd inconvenience people.

On the other hand, if I'm alone on a street and you're walking towards me so I just pass you for a second, I can't imagine that the smell would be that bad from just a casual walk-by. When I'm passing people, I hold in my smoke till I pass them.

Even if I agree that smoking outdoors is inconsiderate and annoying to others, I could still do it at home or in dedicated areas (smoking sections in bars with good ventilation, ofr example).

> I don't see why it also has to be cheap?

If we agree on the previous points, then why not let it be cheap? Tobacco is cheap to produce. Most of the price of cigarettes is artificial, to cover medical costs and whatnot. Let's say I sign a waiver that if I get sick, I either pay through the nose or don't receive treatment at all. Would you be OK with letting me buy tobacco at it's original cost (no subsidies, no artificial fees)?

Or, as a thought experiment - let's say tobacco didn't have any smell and there were 0 negative effects of second-hand smoke. Like, you wouldn't know it if I smoked near you unless you saw me. Then what would be the justification in making smoking artificially expensive for me?

To clarify, I use "rage bait" as an example phrase, but it includes algos that only promote engagement at any cost and other things that aren't outright dangerous, but we think are dangerous. Not, like I said, CSAM or yelling FIRE or telling people to kill themselves.

More importantly, why do you think society should make smoking inconvenient - more costly, more illegal or anything like that? If I'm not blowing smoke in your face, why interfere with my desire to smoke? If it's about medical bills, just let me sign a waiver that I won't get cancer treatments or whatever, and let me buy a pack of smokes for what it should cost - a few cents per pack, not a few dollars/euro.

[0] https://gwern.net/nicotine

For example, some teen got radicalized with racist and sexist content. That's bad in my opinion, as I'm not a racist or a sexist. But should racist or sexist speech be censored or regulated? On what grounds? How do we know other unpopular (now or in the future) speech won't be censored or regulated in the future? Again, as much as I'm not a racist or sexist, I don't think the government should have a say in whether a company should be able to promote speech like "whites/blacks are X" or "men/women are Y". What's next? Should we regulate speech about religion (Christians/Muslims/atheists are Z) or ethics (anti-war people or vegans are Q) or politics or drugs or sex?

The current situation is shitty, but giving too much power to regulators will likely make it way shittier. If not now, in the future, since passed regulations are rarely removed.

I also wonder how many hours were wasted by people who had to use inferior technology because Disney kept it secret. Cutting out animals and objects from the background 1 frame at a time seems so mindnumbingly boring.