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autoexec | on: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America
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.

inigyou | parent | next
Polls show overwhelming support for governments to do something about kids on social media.
kelseyfrog | 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.

autoexec | root | parent
> Someone may have a desire or intention to lose weight. But unless they lose the weight they lack incentive.

Here are just some of the incentives overweight people have to lose weight:

They'll look better, to themselves and others. They'll have more clothing options. They'll feel better. They'll be healthier. They'll have drastically lower odds of many future heath problems. They'll live longer which means they can spend more time being with their loved ones.

Those are all incentives. Everyone who is obese has those incentives, even though different individuals may assign different values to them. Even with all those incentives that hasn't stopped the obesity problem. incentives don't incite action, but they can encourage them.

incentive noun [ C or U ] Something that encourages a person to do something by offering them a reward (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/incentiv...)

You can have a ton of encouragement, but that doesn't mean it will be enough to incite a behavior. What definition of incentive are you using?

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