If this is something people want, why does it need a legislative fix? Couldn't we just implement a technical solution and let people choose whether to use it? Like a browser plugin that stops videos from automatically playing?
This could just as well be said about opiates. Human's are not very good at regulating ourselves, when we encounter artificial signals that would have meant success in an earlier time. Not to mention minors, who do not yet have the physical capacity to regulate themselves. Not to say I support this regulation, but there is something to be said for protecting us from our primal selves.
I know you're not saying the government should fully regulate everything, but I see drugs used to demonstrate need for government intervention in people's choices despite drug policy being perhaps the most visible and painful failure of such paternalistic policymaking. Namely because it hasn't protected people from themselves, it hasn't treated anybody's addiction, it mainly just creates violent black markets and saddles nonviolent offenders with a permanent criminal record.
Cynically, I think the real purpose of these laws always looks more like protecting entrenched interests rather than helping people who would get better if only they had some legislator making their life choices from a thousand miles away.
