A token gesture noun phrase
An action or a decision that is taken as a symbol, because it has little or no real effect.
They only stopped considering the regulation as a token gesture until they were fined for breaching it.
It seemed to me that my mom's promise to buy me a new toy was nothing more than a token gesture to encourage me to study harder at that time.
He agreed to clean the house while I was going to the supermarket. But when I came back, nothing had changed. His nod was just a token gesture after all.
This phrase was formed based on the meaning of the adjective "token".
To quit; to give up, stop doing something because you know that you cannot succeed; admit defeat
The team is not going to throw in the towel just because they lost one game.