7 ms·

UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

94 points by Tarsul 2y ago

FerretFred 2y ago
The government will never intervene while the UK gambling industry contributes so much money. In 2022, the total figure was about £14 billion. See https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/report/annual-report-and-accounts-2022-to-2023/annual-report-22-to-23-performance-report-overview-of-the-british-gambling#:~:text=total%20Gross%20Gambling%20Yield%20(GGY,April%202020%20to%20March%202021 https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/report/annual-report-a...
- Retric 2y ago
  It’s a really inefficient tax as the net economic loss is well past £14 billion. One argument is gambling is simply something people like to do, but in that case some regulations would be expected. Where it makes sense is when you’re pulling in outside money from foreigners, but I don’t think many people go to the UK to gamble.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    Do you have a source for the net economic loss being higher?
    - spencerflem 2y ago
      It's absolutely true and not hard to look up
      - giantg2 2y ago
        Then can you share a link? I've seen stuff about negative economic effects of compulsive gambling, but never anything at the aggregate level including the non-problem gamblers. It seems really odd any country would allow gambling if the aggregate effect is negative and so well known. Politicians always talk about the economic benefits (beyond just taxes), but they've also been known to lie.
        skippyboxedhero 2y ago
        The negative effects are generally low. Some types of gambling are close to zero harm (i.e. bingo, some kinds of machines, and sports betting), and the rate of addiction in most studies is under 0.5-1%. The same people who will say that gambling should be illegal are the same people who believe that you should be allowed to take any amount of psychoactive drugs that are addictive for almost everyone and leave a double-digit proportion of users with mental illness (as is apparent to anyone who has compared the US with other countries, the number of mentally ill people is staggering). In particular, the US was the largest gambling market before...when it was illegal. The reason why it is legal is harm reduction. In addition, if you look at some markets where it is not only legal but significant government intervention in activity of gambling companies you find harm because it causes people to go back to illegal casinos. All of this stuff has been proven over and over again across the world. But the reality is that people do not like other people doing things they don't do themselves. That is it. And, for some reason, no-one had an issue when large donors to both US political parties were able to pass laws to make competition in gambling illegal. Massive political corruption that people who talk about morals had no issue with whatsoever...again, because it isn't about morals, it is about other people doing something they don't like and them wanting to stop them doing it. Gambling is definitely one of the weird ones because it is only in countries like the US and China where gambling has a terrible rep...because it has been illegal and a great source of revenue for organised crime. In places like the UK, people gamble, they have fun, and just get on with their lives (again, it is so strange that the US has this attitude...drugs, morbid obesity...no, it is people betting on the Kentucky Derby that need to be brought to heel...of course, not the homeless person smoking crack, it is the guy betting $20 on the SuperBowl, he just can't control himself, the animal). Finally, something that the Guardian never mention is that the only people gambling addiction treatment in the UK up to about three years ago was...gambling companies. NHS wouldn't fund it at all. I think people assume that the government will regulate correctly, that the government will create a better solution...nowhere is this more apparently wrong than in gambling sector (and one big issue in the UK has been increasing growth of the unregulated sector due to the significant rise in the cost of getting a licence due to the skyrocketing budget/staffing in the Gambling Commission...it is more important for them to keep budgets growing, keep the pay rises than reduce harm...who could have forseen this?).
      - echoangle 2y ago
        Can you find a link for me if it’s not hard? https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63bc25b4d3bf7f262c5ad31f/The-economic-cost-of-gambling-related-harm-in-England_evidence-update-2023.pdf#page6 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63bc25b4d3bf7... This looks fairly official and cites 1.05 to 1.77 billion £ in societal cost on page 6. That’s less than 14 billion £.
        beejiu 2y ago
        Even if you accept those figures (and the report itself says they are underestimates), in what other industry do we allow 10% of your topline revenue to directly result in suicide and depression?
        giantg2 2y ago
        Alcohol? Probably others.
        echoangle 2y ago
        Not suicide and depression but the tobacco industry is probably similar. I wouldn’t go as far as claiming 10% but sugar is probably not very healthy for society either. And I’m not even saying that gambling is fine or should be supported, I was just sceptical of the claim that the damages exceed the income.
        Retric 2y ago
        I think a more compelling argument is damages exceed the profit even if they don’t exceed the gross revenue. It’s one of those things where yes people are forking over 14 billion per year, but that’s because they have 14 billion which would otherwise be spent on something else. Even just VAT on 14 billion gets close to the total tax revenue from UK gambling especially when you include other economic losses. So where’s the benefit?
        spencerflem 2y ago
        That links not bad, though like beiju said, it does mention "Looking from a wider societal perspective, there are a range of costs that have not, or have only been partially quantified here (such as crime, education, cultural harms, impacts on relationships and wider impacts on the families of gamblers). For these reasons, we believe the figures of £412.9 million and £635 to £1,355.5 million to be an underestimate of the true scale of the total economic burden associated with harmful gambling."
- beejiu 2y ago
  £14 billion is the industry revenue. Gambling taxes to the state are £3.3 billion. Gambling harms are costed at £1.77 billion, of which £1 billion is death from suicide and £0.5 billion for depression. Those costs are conservative estimates (the government "expect that the true costs are higher because the lack of evidence meant that it was not possible to cost all types of harms or the wider harms to individuals or society") In what other industry are those societal harms acceptable? Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gambling-related-harms-evidence-review/gambling-related-harms-evidence-review-summary--2#conclusions-and-next-steps https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gambling-related-...
  - locallost 2y ago
    Automotive industry. If you factor in climate change, then fossil fuel industry first and foremost, but actually quite a lot of them.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      Really all of them if we're bringing in the environmental concerns. Even the "green" companies due to their inputs and methods.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Automobiles have serious positive externalities. Even just ambulances and fire trucks are a major societal benefit. I’m drawing a blank on the positive externalities gambling provides to offset its downsides? Reducing illegal gambling...
      - locallost 2y ago
        The question was which industries with such negative externalities get tolerated. So: * 1.2 million people die every year in car accidents * 200k children die every year * pollution, air pollution, but also noise pollution * people sitting in traffic for hours every day, effectively doing nothing productive * decade long destruction of communities to build roads. * additionally and especially in the US these have been used to target communities of minorities * Etc. It does have also positive externalities, but the rare communities worldwide that decided to promote other means of transport in every day life have found they are better off. Thus in a lot of cases the negatives outweigh the positives. Is this an excuse for gambling? No, but there are many of these around us in every day life, we just don't notice them. So I was merely answering a question asked.
- hbrav 2y ago
  I don't believe this is creating £14B of value. It's transferring £14B from people (I suspect largely poor people) to those firms. We should crack down on these firms. They're a net negative for Britain.
cm2012 2y ago
I work in advertising and defend tracking, targeting, Meta, etc all the time as largely harmless. But I think one exception is when they promote products which are bad. Tobacco ads are already banned - gambling should 100% be a banned ad category. So should mobile apps that are basically gambling in disguise.
- dagurp 2y ago
  Gambling ads are banned in my country but we get bombarded by them on YouTube. Me and a bunch of people I've talked to have reported them many times but nothing happens.
- EA-3167 2y ago
  How do you feel about advertising alcohol, Gacha games, MLM businesses and things like that?
  - cm2012 2y ago
    I'd ban them all
    - EA-3167 2y ago
      Alright, well you have my respect.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  What is bad? Alcohol? Cheap clothes made to be worn a handful times and that shed microplastics all over the place? Gratuitous consumption solely for the purpose of signaling wealth? Political parties that want to restrict people’s rights?
  - miohtama 2y ago
    Software industry that defines bad is called compliance-industrial complex. Defining bad is a big business. Here is a good book about it: https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operating-Pre-Crime-Society/dp/3031192230 https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati...
stuaxo 2y ago
Blairs government deregulated gambling to a large extent, hoping for some tax back from large casinos in theory at least.
- ashoeafoot 2y ago
  industry is basically a tax on the government's paid out social services
- DrBazza 2y ago
  That was the government that was supposed to stand up 'for the poor', but allowing a predatory industry to thrive, whose main demographic are 'the poor'.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    Have there been any governments in the developed world in the past 25 years that has actually stood up for the poor? I know some have said they would but it seems like their ideas are just expansion of benefits programs that don't actually help the problem or move the stats. Seems more like buying votes.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      Japan has dramatically expanded social benefits for young families in the past 25 years. I would say these programmes mostly benefit the middle class and below. The US didn't have national healthcare before President Obama. Millions of middle and low income people are now insured under that programme. President George W. Bush helped to add coverage for prescription drugs to Medicare (national health insurance for retired people). This is just a short list. I am sure others can provide a many examples from Korea, Taiwan, Scandinavia or AU/NZ.
      - giantg2 2y ago
        But what did those do to reduce poverty numbers? As I said before, there were expansion of benefits, but it doesn't seem to have reduced the poverty numbers.
GlacierFox 2y ago
I've never made a bet before, on an app or in a betting shop and have no inclination to ever do so. However, in the UK I'm bombarded with gambling (bingo and 'games') advertisements on daytime TV aimed at trying to convince me it's actually in some way fun to pittle away my money. Then if I watch anything after 10pm on a UK streaming service or live advertising funded TV, I'm absolutely battered with endless gambling site adverts. I'm not exaggerating, every single one of them. I think the government's sat with it's fingers crossed hoping to ride this wave and reap the rewards until it has to come out with the obligatory crackdown on this psychopathic industry it's allowing to fester and expand at an alarming rate. It's an epidemic here but it's all fun though guys isn't it? Guys? Nothing wrong with a flutter now and then!
- giantg2 2y ago
  It's pretty rampant in the US too. I don't think a little gambling is bad, but the endless ads are a huge problem. They should really make all advertising of commonly addictive stuff banned - gambling, alcohol, etc. They should also do a better job of educating kids in school about the dangers and tricks. They were going you $100+ to open an account, or doing a deposit match up to $1k here. It's exactly what drug dealers do to get people hooked or scam artists to con someone - here's a free taste, or a deal that's too good to pass up.
  - ChoHag 2y ago
    [dead]
  - dutchbookmaker 2y ago
    I think sports betting is obnoxious and stupid but I do worry about this moral policing some seem to want to do. The people I know losing money to online sports betting are the same people who thought they were going to become pro online poker grinders 15 years ago. If you got rid of online sports betting they would go play slots at the casino more and waste their money on the lottery. If you get rid of all games of chance for money, there is a good % of people who will find a way to squander their savings somehow. If anything, people I know waste far more money going out to eat than sports betting.
andyjohnson0 2y ago
I'm in the UK and have been applying for dev jobs over the last six months. I've had at least five approaches from recruiters representing gambling companies. They seem to have a lot of money to spend on salaries, and promise experience of languages like Go, and also ML, data science, etc. I always give them the same answer: no. I don't work for parasites. I remember the time before the Blair government unwisely deregulated gambling, and I hope we can one day return to that.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  Are there any other parasites you wouldn't work for?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - urbandw311er 2y ago
    Not the parent poster but maybe certain banks and financial institutions
- noneeeed 2y ago
  Likewise. I will happily work in the vast majority of legal industries in the UK, they all have varying degrees of social good about them. I might not get a warm fuzzy feeling about all of them, but a job's a job. But I won't touch gambling, especially in the UK. It a nasty, predatory industry that preys on people. They know they are doing it, but they hide behind BS excuses and empty promises, and time after time investigations clearly show they intentionally goad on problem gamblers. To be clear, this isn't a moral objection to people gambling. If you enjoy it, and are in control, then have fun. It's the companies, they are scum.
- giantg2 2y ago
  I hate them, but I'd probably work for them. There's a lot to hate about places like big tech, finance, energy, and basically every other sector. It would probably soul crushing, but so is my current job.
Veserv 2y ago
Once again, we see that deceptive marketing is one of the great legal evils. Their marketing department assuredly pulled long hours carefully and intentionally crafting statements meant to cause the recipient to believe something false or at the very least different than what they actually believe, i.e. deception. They almost certainly ran focus groups verifying that their targets would, in fact, believe the untrue things they wanted them to believe that would enrich themselves. In court they will say: "Technically, your honor, the words used could, in the most contrived and worst of all possible universes, actually mean something true; so our deliberate and intentional actions to make sure that they would be misinterpreted by our victims can not be held against us." If you carefully crafted a statement and verified its reception and interpretation, and only after it has been misinterpreted as intended then claim that "technically, your honor..." you should be guilty of false advertising or equivalent. You had plenty of opportunity to make sure that the standard interpretation of your statements would be accurate, but you intentionally chose to make it deceptive for your own enrichment. The more time, money, and effort spent on a message, the more accurate, truthful, and only unintentionally misinterpretable to your benefit it should be. All of that effort now spent on focus grouping how to make it intentionally deceptive must instead be focused on making it intentionally truthful. This would reward true, accurate, and helpful marketing that seeks to inform at the cost of hampering false, deceptive, misleading marketing seeking to separate society from its money for garbage or actively harmful products and services. "Technically, your honor..." should be met with "Go directly to jail".
justinclift 2y ago
> One recipient, the intelligence firm Signal, had used it to conduct sophisticated profiling that it sent back to Sky Betting & Gaming That sounds like a different "Signal" than most people are aware of.
throwaway2037 2y ago
Related: The website LessWrong has an epic write-up about the negative impacts of online sports gambling in the United States: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online-sports-gambling-experiment-has-failed https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online...
2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
what a world where an adult doesn't even have to take responsibility for their own actions because of whatever excuse. sad state.

94 points by Tarsul 2y ago

The government will never intervene while the UK gambling industry contributes so much money. In 2022, the total figure was about £14 billion. See https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/report/annual-report-and-accounts-2022-to-2023/annual-report-22-to-23-performance-report-overview-of-the-british-gambling#:~:text=total%20Gross%20Gambling%20Yield%20(GGY,April%202020%20to%20March%202021 https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/report/annual-report-a...

Retric 2y ago
It’s a really inefficient tax as the net economic loss is well past £14 billion. One argument is gambling is simply something people like to do, but in that case some regulations would be expected. Where it makes sense is when you’re pulling in outside money from foreigners, but I don’t think many people go to the UK to gamble.
- echoangle 2y ago
  Do you have a source for the net economic loss being higher?
  - spencerflem 2y ago
    It's absolutely true and not hard to look up
    - giantg2 2y ago
      Then can you share a link? I've seen stuff about negative economic effects of compulsive gambling, but never anything at the aggregate level including the non-problem gamblers. It seems really odd any country would allow gambling if the aggregate effect is negative and so well known. Politicians always talk about the economic benefits (beyond just taxes), but they've also been known to lie.
      - skippyboxedhero 2y ago
        The negative effects are generally low. Some types of gambling are close to zero harm (i.e. bingo, some kinds of machines, and sports betting), and the rate of addiction in most studies is under 0.5-1%. The same people who will say that gambling should be illegal are the same people who believe that you should be allowed to take any amount of psychoactive drugs that are addictive for almost everyone and leave a double-digit proportion of users with mental illness (as is apparent to anyone who has compared the US with other countries, the number of mentally ill people is staggering). In particular, the US was the largest gambling market before...when it was illegal. The reason why it is legal is harm reduction. In addition, if you look at some markets where it is not only legal but significant government intervention in activity of gambling companies you find harm because it causes people to go back to illegal casinos. All of this stuff has been proven over and over again across the world. But the reality is that people do not like other people doing things they don't do themselves. That is it. And, for some reason, no-one had an issue when large donors to both US political parties were able to pass laws to make competition in gambling illegal. Massive political corruption that people who talk about morals had no issue with whatsoever...again, because it isn't about morals, it is about other people doing something they don't like and them wanting to stop them doing it. Gambling is definitely one of the weird ones because it is only in countries like the US and China where gambling has a terrible rep...because it has been illegal and a great source of revenue for organised crime. In places like the UK, people gamble, they have fun, and just get on with their lives (again, it is so strange that the US has this attitude...drugs, morbid obesity...no, it is people betting on the Kentucky Derby that need to be brought to heel...of course, not the homeless person smoking crack, it is the guy betting $20 on the SuperBowl, he just can't control himself, the animal). Finally, something that the Guardian never mention is that the only people gambling addiction treatment in the UK up to about three years ago was...gambling companies. NHS wouldn't fund it at all. I think people assume that the government will regulate correctly, that the government will create a better solution...nowhere is this more apparently wrong than in gambling sector (and one big issue in the UK has been increasing growth of the unregulated sector due to the significant rise in the cost of getting a licence due to the skyrocketing budget/staffing in the Gambling Commission...it is more important for them to keep budgets growing, keep the pay rises than reduce harm...who could have forseen this?).
    - echoangle 2y ago
      Can you find a link for me if it’s not hard? https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63bc25b4d3bf7f262c5ad31f/The-economic-cost-of-gambling-related-harm-in-England_evidence-update-2023.pdf#page6 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63bc25b4d3bf7... This looks fairly official and cites 1.05 to 1.77 billion £ in societal cost on page 6. That’s less than 14 billion £.
      - beejiu 2y ago
        Even if you accept those figures (and the report itself says they are underestimates), in what other industry do we allow 10% of your topline revenue to directly result in suicide and depression?
        giantg2 2y ago
        Alcohol? Probably others.
        echoangle 2y ago
        Not suicide and depression but the tobacco industry is probably similar. I wouldn’t go as far as claiming 10% but sugar is probably not very healthy for society either. And I’m not even saying that gambling is fine or should be supported, I was just sceptical of the claim that the damages exceed the income.
        Retric 2y ago
        I think a more compelling argument is damages exceed the profit even if they don’t exceed the gross revenue. It’s one of those things where yes people are forking over 14 billion per year, but that’s because they have 14 billion which would otherwise be spent on something else. Even just VAT on 14 billion gets close to the total tax revenue from UK gambling especially when you include other economic losses. So where’s the benefit?
      - spencerflem 2y ago
        That links not bad, though like beiju said, it does mention "Looking from a wider societal perspective, there are a range of costs that have not, or have only been partially quantified here (such as crime, education, cultural harms, impacts on relationships and wider impacts on the families of gamblers). For these reasons, we believe the figures of £412.9 million and £635 to £1,355.5 million to be an underestimate of the true scale of the total economic burden associated with harmful gambling."
beejiu 2y ago
£14 billion is the industry revenue. Gambling taxes to the state are £3.3 billion. Gambling harms are costed at £1.77 billion, of which £1 billion is death from suicide and £0.5 billion for depression. Those costs are conservative estimates (the government "expect that the true costs are higher because the lack of evidence meant that it was not possible to cost all types of harms or the wider harms to individuals or society") In what other industry are those societal harms acceptable? Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gambling-related-harms-evidence-review/gambling-related-harms-evidence-review-summary--2#conclusions-and-next-steps https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gambling-related-...
- locallost 2y ago
  Automotive industry. If you factor in climate change, then fossil fuel industry first and foremost, but actually quite a lot of them.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    Really all of them if we're bringing in the environmental concerns. Even the "green" companies due to their inputs and methods.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Automobiles have serious positive externalities. Even just ambulances and fire trucks are a major societal benefit. I’m drawing a blank on the positive externalities gambling provides to offset its downsides? Reducing illegal gambling...
    - locallost 2y ago
      The question was which industries with such negative externalities get tolerated. So: * 1.2 million people die every year in car accidents * 200k children die every year * pollution, air pollution, but also noise pollution * people sitting in traffic for hours every day, effectively doing nothing productive * decade long destruction of communities to build roads. * additionally and especially in the US these have been used to target communities of minorities * Etc. It does have also positive externalities, but the rare communities worldwide that decided to promote other means of transport in every day life have found they are better off. Thus in a lot of cases the negatives outweigh the positives. Is this an excuse for gambling? No, but there are many of these around us in every day life, we just don't notice them. So I was merely answering a question asked.
hbrav 2y ago
I don't believe this is creating £14B of value. It's transferring £14B from people (I suspect largely poor people) to those firms. We should crack down on these firms. They're a net negative for Britain.

cm2012 2y ago

I work in advertising and defend tracking, targeting, Meta, etc all the time as largely harmless. But I think one exception is when they promote products which are bad. Tobacco ads are already banned - gambling should 100% be a banned ad category. So should mobile apps that are basically gambling in disguise.

dagurp 2y ago
Gambling ads are banned in my country but we get bombarded by them on YouTube. Me and a bunch of people I've talked to have reported them many times but nothing happens.
EA-3167 2y ago
How do you feel about advertising alcohol, Gacha games, MLM businesses and things like that?
- cm2012 2y ago
  I'd ban them all
  - EA-3167 2y ago
    Alright, well you have my respect.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
What is bad? Alcohol? Cheap clothes made to be worn a handful times and that shed microplastics all over the place? Gratuitous consumption solely for the purpose of signaling wealth? Political parties that want to restrict people’s rights?
- miohtama 2y ago
  Software industry that defines bad is called compliance-industrial complex. Defining bad is a big business. Here is a good book about it: https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operating-Pre-Crime-Society/dp/3031192230 https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati...

stuaxo 2y ago

Blairs government deregulated gambling to a large extent, hoping for some tax back from large casinos in theory at least.

ashoeafoot 2y ago
industry is basically a tax on the government's paid out social services
DrBazza 2y ago
That was the government that was supposed to stand up 'for the poor', but allowing a predatory industry to thrive, whose main demographic are 'the poor'.
- giantg2 2y ago
  Have there been any governments in the developed world in the past 25 years that has actually stood up for the poor? I know some have said they would but it seems like their ideas are just expansion of benefits programs that don't actually help the problem or move the stats. Seems more like buying votes.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    Japan has dramatically expanded social benefits for young families in the past 25 years. I would say these programmes mostly benefit the middle class and below. The US didn't have national healthcare before President Obama. Millions of middle and low income people are now insured under that programme. President George W. Bush helped to add coverage for prescription drugs to Medicare (national health insurance for retired people). This is just a short list. I am sure others can provide a many examples from Korea, Taiwan, Scandinavia or AU/NZ.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      But what did those do to reduce poverty numbers? As I said before, there were expansion of benefits, but it doesn't seem to have reduced the poverty numbers.

GlacierFox 2y ago

I've never made a bet before, on an app or in a betting shop and have no inclination to ever do so. However, in the UK I'm bombarded with gambling (bingo and 'games') advertisements on daytime TV aimed at trying to convince me it's actually in some way fun to pittle away my money. Then if I watch anything after 10pm on a UK streaming service or live advertising funded TV, I'm absolutely battered with endless gambling site adverts. I'm not exaggerating, every single one of them. I think the government's sat with it's fingers crossed hoping to ride this wave and reap the rewards until it has to come out with the obligatory crackdown on this psychopathic industry it's allowing to fester and expand at an alarming rate. It's an epidemic here but it's all fun though guys isn't it? Guys? Nothing wrong with a flutter now and then!

giantg2 2y ago
It's pretty rampant in the US too. I don't think a little gambling is bad, but the endless ads are a huge problem. They should really make all advertising of commonly addictive stuff banned - gambling, alcohol, etc. They should also do a better job of educating kids in school about the dangers and tricks. They were going you $100+ to open an account, or doing a deposit match up to $1k here. It's exactly what drug dealers do to get people hooked or scam artists to con someone - here's a free taste, or a deal that's too good to pass up.
- ChoHag 2y ago
  [dead]
- dutchbookmaker 2y ago
  I think sports betting is obnoxious and stupid but I do worry about this moral policing some seem to want to do. The people I know losing money to online sports betting are the same people who thought they were going to become pro online poker grinders 15 years ago. If you got rid of online sports betting they would go play slots at the casino more and waste their money on the lottery. If you get rid of all games of chance for money, there is a good % of people who will find a way to squander their savings somehow. If anything, people I know waste far more money going out to eat than sports betting.

andyjohnson0 2y ago

I'm in the UK and have been applying for dev jobs over the last six months. I've had at least five approaches from recruiters representing gambling companies. They seem to have a lot of money to spend on salaries, and promise experience of languages like Go, and also ML, data science, etc. I always give them the same answer: no. I don't work for parasites. I remember the time before the Blair government unwisely deregulated gambling, and I hope we can one day return to that.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
Are there any other parasites you wouldn't work for?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- urbandw311er 2y ago
  Not the parent poster but maybe certain banks and financial institutions
noneeeed 2y ago
Likewise. I will happily work in the vast majority of legal industries in the UK, they all have varying degrees of social good about them. I might not get a warm fuzzy feeling about all of them, but a job's a job. But I won't touch gambling, especially in the UK. It a nasty, predatory industry that preys on people. They know they are doing it, but they hide behind BS excuses and empty promises, and time after time investigations clearly show they intentionally goad on problem gamblers. To be clear, this isn't a moral objection to people gambling. If you enjoy it, and are in control, then have fun. It's the companies, they are scum.
giantg2 2y ago
I hate them, but I'd probably work for them. There's a lot to hate about places like big tech, finance, energy, and basically every other sector. It would probably soul crushing, but so is my current job.

Veserv 2y ago

Once again, we see that deceptive marketing is one of the great legal evils. Their marketing department assuredly pulled long hours carefully and intentionally crafting statements meant to cause the recipient to believe something false or at the very least different than what they actually believe, i.e. deception. They almost certainly ran focus groups verifying that their targets would, in fact, believe the untrue things they wanted them to believe that would enrich themselves. In court they will say: "Technically, your honor, the words used could, in the most contrived and worst of all possible universes, actually mean something true; so our deliberate and intentional actions to make sure that they would be misinterpreted by our victims can not be held against us." If you carefully crafted a statement and verified its reception and interpretation, and only after it has been misinterpreted as intended then claim that "technically, your honor..." you should be guilty of false advertising or equivalent. You had plenty of opportunity to make sure that the standard interpretation of your statements would be accurate, but you intentionally chose to make it deceptive for your own enrichment. The more time, money, and effort spent on a message, the more accurate, truthful, and only unintentionally misinterpretable to your benefit it should be. All of that effort now spent on focus grouping how to make it intentionally deceptive must instead be focused on making it intentionally truthful. This would reward true, accurate, and helpful marketing that seeks to inform at the cost of hampering false, deceptive, misleading marketing seeking to separate society from its money for garbage or actively harmful products and services. "Technically, your honor..." should be met with "Go directly to jail".

justinclift 2y ago

> One recipient, the intelligence firm Signal, had used it to conduct sophisticated profiling that it sent back to Sky Betting & Gaming That sounds like a different "Signal" than most people are aware of.

throwaway2037 2y ago

Related: The website LessWrong has an epic write-up about the negative impacts of online sports gambling in the United States: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online-sports-gambling-experiment-has-failed https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online...

2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago

what a world where an adult doesn't even have to take responsibility for their own actions because of whatever excuse. sad state.