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kelseyfrog | on: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America
Why repeat the same argument if it clearly hasn't worked? Do you expect it to suddenly become effective?

Change in behavior can only follow from change in incentives. Parents must be held legally liable if they allow their children access to social media. That means jail time for negligence.

Gigachad | parent | next
Why would we even consider jailing parents before banning social media from kids and jailing Mark Zuckerberg for pushing it on them?

The power imbalance between individual parents and big tech is immense.

How can we be mad at random parents for not defeating the most powerful and rich people in history?

kelseyfrog | root | parent
Because according to HN there's no way to force social media companies to not serve children without destroying privacy. That leaves parents who aren't changing their behavior because nothing has incited them to change. Legal liabily is an incentive that changes behavior.
iamnothere | root | parent
Maybe not everyone agrees that social media causes literal cancer. I mean it’s not great, but it’s not the worst thing on earth, either. It’s clearly become a moral panic at this point.
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autoexec | parent
Supposedly the incentive already exists because parents want their children saved from the harms of facebook and social media. The story is that parents are clamoring for the government to do something about it. I don't think parents really are, or where they are the expectation is that the social media companies will be forced to change their behavior, not that parents will be forced to start parenting their children or be forced to provide a scan of their face and passport every time they do an internet search.

The government has just decided to fall back on "think of the children" as a way to implement more surveillance and control.

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kelseyfrog | root | parent
The incentive for parents to stop giving their children smartphones does not exist. If it did exist, it would incite parents to perform the action: ie not give their children smartphones.

Incentives incite action. No action. No incentive.

autoexec | root | parent
That's not true. Incentives aren't the whole cause of behavior and they aren't the solution to changing it either. That's the same simplistic and flawed mentality that pushes for harsher punishments to deter crime when the evidence shows that doesn't work and that not even death penalty is an effective deterrent. People have several incentives to lose weight, but increasingly they still overeat.

Incentives play a role, you don't want to encourage wrong behaviors certainly, but they're just one factor in determining what people do or don't do. At best, they nudge. Those nudges aren't likely to overcome stronger forces, or even several weaker ones.

kelseyfrog | root | parent
I'm sorry, but that is simply wrong. You're confusing desire/intention with incentive.

Someone may have a desire or intention to lose weight. But unless they lose the weight they lack incentive.

It's simple: incentives incite action. Don't make it more complicated to win an argument.

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