I know teenagers do stupid things, and that they're more likely to do stupid things in the name of fashion. I'm old enough to recall the 1980s when body art first took off and it became cool for guys to wear earrings without being a pirate or a gypsy. I pierced my own ears around this time, despite being warned about everything from the risk of infection to the possibility of illness by hitting an acupuncture point (a risk what was inexplicably not assumed to be true for girls).
Well not only did I end up with holes in my ears but over a the years they did get infected on a few occasions when I didn't clean my earrings properly, and I had to clean out a small but painful and gross cyst. None of this is the fault of the people who manufacture earrings. No results yet on the acupuncture danger but after 30 years I'm beginning to think that warning may have been misplaced.
There's a reason the CPSC banned lawn darts but not blowtorches or medical sharps or the safety pin you probably used to pierce your ear. There's not much ambiguity about the dangerous things the CPSC doesn't care about. But you can't say that about the magnets, which cause truly horrible medical calamities that most ordinary people do not expect.
Also, not sure if we were just hiding on different ends of HN or whatever, but it's good to bump into you again!
1). Prevent this business from existing.
2). Allow toy magnets to exist, thereby allowing X children to die from swallowing toy magnets.
I don't think this is ZenMagnet's fault. But I think placing a restriction on toy magnets is probably a net positive.