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Comment by henryfjordan | Hacker News Reader

Cheeseburgers are everywhere, are addictive to some, and eventually eating enough will kill you.

Put another way: If McDonalds sees I eat 5 cheeseburgers a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me for my own health? Do they need to step in at all?

If Facebook knows I'm scrolling 6 hours a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me?

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Cheeseburgers are not everywhere. I'm sitting at my desk, social media is here but cheeseburgers are not. Social media is always with me other than in the shower. Cheeseburgers are not.

I can get a cheeseburger delivered, or there's a dozen places within a 15 minute walk to get one. I can hardly leave the house without seeing an ad for one or some other fast food item on the side of a bus. I can't avoid being hungry, but I can leave my phone at home.

Sure it's a matter of degrees but I don't see a bright line between McDonald's and tiktok. Both want me hooked on their product. Both have harmful aspects. Both have customers they know are over-indulging. Why would only tiktok be liable for that?

If I had to walk for 15 minutes or pay a hefty delivery fee to access social media, my usage would be massively lower. If there was a cheeseburger in my hand all day every day I would be a lot fatter.

If people never felt full from food, food was always instantly available in your pocket, and food costed no money to obtain, I believe McDonalds and TikTok would be very equivalent. Likely McDonalds would even be far worse since people would probably be dying to it daily.

That's the bright line. The lack of any barrier to entry.

A bar has a legal responsibility to stop serving people at some point, so this obligation is not unheard of.

> Put another way: If McDonalds sees I eat 5 cheeseburgers a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me for my own health? Do they need to step in at all?

Is McDonald's adjusting the flavour and ingredients of each cheeseburger it serves you with the express purpose of encouraging you to order the next one as soon as possible?

They are constantly evolving the menu and it's entirely data-driven, so yes? It's not down to the person level like tiktok but if they could, it would be.

So compared to TikTok and algorithms the answer is no then? If they could I agree they would, but they can't target food on the same level that TikTok does.

How is the cheeseburger that you receive differently tailored to your own addiction than the cheeseburger that the following customer will receive is to theirs?

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