7 ms·

All these gambling apps need regulation. And I fear they are buying politicians precisely so that doesn't happen. If I were to have my way, I'd put a law in p

All these gambling apps need regulation. And I fear they are buying politicians precisely so that doesn't happen. If I were to have my way, I'd put a law in place that limits bets to $5 max and monthly bets to $150 per month. Letting them go higher encourages some of the worst aspects of society. We will see crazy things like athletes being injured or murdered in order to win bets. We are already seeing crazy things like white house insiders placing bets on when wars will start. One of the few ways to really solve this problem is reducing the possible amount of award so the individuals placing these bets don't feel like they have to take matters into their own hands to win.

ExpertAdvisor01 4mo ago
This would just push everyone to unlicensed casinos/bookmakers . Means no tax revenue + even worse player protection.
- bdangubic 4mo ago
  make this severely illegal with minimum two decades behind bars and what how they disappear… this is a very solvable problem which no one wants to solve
  - ExpertAdvisor01 4mo ago
    Good luck with cross-border enforcement. Also the operator is completely legal/compliant with it's jurisdictions laws as they allow us players (many now blacklist the us, but some not ) So they won't accept any foreign judgement . That's why most countries rather target their infrastructure (psps/banking etc ..) Even Eu countries had/have severe problems with Malta (due e.g Article 56A of the malta gaming act, which shields the operator from foreign judgements)
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - charcircuit 4mo ago
      Make the websites unconnectable from the US. Make domestic ISPs not route the traffic to the site else jail time for the executives. Make VPNs not route traffic to the site else jail time for the executives and being null routed by domestic ISPs. If you really want to crack down on it, then it could be done.
      - pjc50 4mo ago
        In the ancient days of 2011, this was done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg
  - sumedh 4mo ago
    Because they know it will not work.
  - streetfighter64 4mo ago
    People have spend decades in prison for selling weed. Now it's legalized in more and more countries. Making things people like illegal rarely works, and it's far from a "solvable problem". Don't get me wrong, gambling is very bad, but if we were to analyze it statistically I think alcohol is way worse for society at large. And we all know how making alcohol illegal went.
    - boelboel 4mo ago
      Legal weed has been a disaster in the US, 20 million addicted (almost daily use/daily use) versus a few million before it was banned.
      - streetfighter64 4mo ago
        Note that I'm not in favor of either weed or alcohol being as readily accessible as they are now, but there are a few things making that claim a bit dubious. The first is that obviously people are less reluctant to self-report using weed if it's legal. Secondly, the causation could be reversed, i.e. there are other factors in society contributing to both higher usage and larger general support for legalization. In any case, my point was that simply making something illegal with the threat of "decades in prison" isn't a very good solution. Gambling, drugs, social media, etc. are all "big business", there's money to be made because there's a demand for it. How to solve that I don't know, but just prohibiting it doesn't seem like a good fix.
      - watwut 4mo ago
        You made that claim up. There was a study of Some 22 million people around the world being dependent on marijuana. You are severely overestimating US addicted people. What about this: that policy was huge success, because unlike gambling, weed is fairly harmless.
        boelboel 4mo ago
        https://apnews.com/article/marijuana-cannabis-alcohol-use-disorder-daily-9cec33f3ac513123c8ffc8b8b3141877 https://apnews.com/article/marijuana-cannabis-alcohol-use-di... Close to 18 million in 2022, not exactly 20 million.
  - cataphract 4mo ago
    Seems very disproportional. Reminds me of that TNG episode where the penalty for every offense, no matter how minor, is the death penalty.
ok_dad 4mo ago
We should just make gambling illegal online again, things were fine back when you couldn’t gamble online then, at least in the USA, the fucking supreme corpo guzzlers (formerly the Supreme Court) interpreted the laws according to their owners will and now we have gambling online.
- irishcoffee 4mo ago
  Probation was a thing, too. How did that turn out?
  - ok_dad 4mo ago
    You can’t download drugs and alcohol digitally. Frankly, being able to buy drugs and alcohol online is probably a mistake, too.
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > You can’t download drugs and alcohol digitally It was almost certainly easier for most people to buy drugs than gamble illegally when both were illegal.
      - jmcgough 4mo ago
        Most states had lotteries before this though. At least those brought in tax money and were designed to be relatively fair. Online gambling can shut down your account and refuse to pay if you get too big of a payout, and their money isn't going towards public schools.
  - nemomarx 4mo ago
    There wasn't some mass movement of people doing online gambling that led to the dam bursting and it getting legalized, though. Courts just made a different decision and opened it up one day and as far as I know there wasn't even mass lobbying about it?
    - 4mo ago
EA-3167 4mo ago
Just another hearty dividend thanks to corporate personhood and Citizen's United. Rarely has a single decision so thoroughly broken our system, but the regulatory capture is plain to see these days.
- BrenBarn 4mo ago
  Citizens United gets a lot of flak, and it wasn't good, but it's far from the only factor here. We can at least go back to Buckley v. Valeo which gave us the idea that "money is speech". Corporations are a problem, but money is a bigger problem.
j16sdiz 4mo ago
Most of their practice are illegal already. The problem is lack of enforcement. We are not suing polymarket. We are not suing the marketing company. And we don't want online censorship. IMO, the marketing company / media company should be sued. -- They are (relatively) easier target to sue. Many are US based and not going anywhere. With enough luck, this might give us a better internet with less SEO bullshit.
DANmode 4mo ago
The regulation has gone the opposite direction, recently. It was regulated.
aaron695 4mo ago
[dead]
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
what 4mo ago
>gambling sites I think I’d probably go farther. Next time you’re in a corner store or gas station, pay attention to who is wasting their money on scratchers or other lotto tickets. You shouldn’t be allowed to gamble unless you can prove it’s disposable income.
- parpfish 4mo ago
  we prevent people from gambling on early stage startups and risky investments by limiting investment to "accredited investors". same thing should apply to gambling.
  - FireBeyond 4mo ago
    I believe some countries/casinos in Southeast Asia have policies that you either have to show a foreign passport, or put a deposit of $500-1000 down to enter the casino, that you get back when you leave, with the theory (easily exploitable, I'm sure) being that you can't leave the casino penniless.
parpfish 4mo ago
for a while i was using the sports gambling apps to make lots of little bets. it was fun to put $0.50 on a game I normally wouldn't watch and tune in with a real rooting interest. i never bet more that $1 on a game because I knew that I would really dislike losing 'real money'. the fact was that the stakes were completely irrelevant to me. the value came from definitively and publicly taking a side. if you're the fan of a team, you do this in every game. but with these little bets it's a way to sign-on for a little slice of being a fan in every game. and that got me thinking that there's potentially a different type of gambling app that ignores the money and is more of a social/prediction-making platform. people love chasing worthless internet points (reddit upvotes, HN karma, etc), so why not build a platform that gives you points for betting? you could let a chunk of the population scratch the itch they get to gamble without creating financial risk. they can still brag about their wins.
- somenameforme 4mo ago
  I'd do something fairly similarly, but in a sort of emotional hedge. If in a fight I was really rooting for one guy, I'd put a relatively small amount of money on the other. Ok 'my guy' lost, but hey - dinner's free tonight! It's also quite remarkable how often arbitrage opportunities come up where you can put bets on both sides with a guaranteed win. You'd think they'd all get eaten up by bots, but that's not at all the case.
  - drw85 4mo ago
    Those are the dark patterns. Give a player that is hesitant a good opportunity to place a pretty much guaranteed winning bet and try to get them to cross their threshold. Once crossed, it’s much harder not to cross it again for most people.
- bojan 4mo ago
  > and that got me thinking that there's potentially a different type of gambling app that ignores the money and is more of a social/prediction-making platform We have that in the Netherlands and we do it massively for every World Cup and Euro. The app my friend groups are on, Scorito, has 1.5 million competitors for the current WC, in the country of 18 million, and that's not the only app. Normally a group would make a small buy in, like €5, where the winner takes all, but this year the legal department at work forbade that, se that sort of gambling Is actual illegal.
csomar 4mo ago
That will make things worse unless you reign in crypto. If you regulate Kalshi, people will use the unregulated polymarket which is already illegal in the united states.
kayalan 4mo ago
sports gambling has been going for several years in UK and several other countries. i dont remember anyone getting murdered over a lost bet.
- rjmunro 4mo ago
  It's been going for centuries in the UK. There have been murders: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/father-jailed-for-killing-daughter-in-fury-at-failed-football-bet-8550510.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/father-jailed-fo... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/gambler-murdered-woman-for-pounds-400-1508888.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/gambler-murdered-woman... It's a bit hard to find good stats, but it's at least 1 or 2 a year, it could be more like 10 - plenty of domestic violence is caused by money problems, and those problems can often be gambling related. There's a lot of suicides - between 250 and 650 people each year according to gamblingwithlives.org https://www.gamblingwithlives.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/The-Number-of-Gambling-Related-Suicides-in-the-UK.pdf https://www.gamblingwithlives.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01...
chris_money202 4mo ago
Have to remember that regulated gambling also has lobbyist so unless regulated gambling is invested in these apps they are likely trying to get them banned or also regulated
xpct 4mo ago
I'd say this goes for more than gambling. Since digitalization, we've removed a lot of friction from depraved behavior, and regulation hasn't caught up to it yet.

ExpertAdvisor01 4mo ago

This would just push everyone to unlicensed casinos/bookmakers . Means no tax revenue + even worse player protection.

bdangubic 4mo ago
make this severely illegal with minimum two decades behind bars and what how they disappear… this is a very solvable problem which no one wants to solve
- ExpertAdvisor01 4mo ago
  Good luck with cross-border enforcement. Also the operator is completely legal/compliant with it's jurisdictions laws as they allow us players (many now blacklist the us, but some not ) So they won't accept any foreign judgement . That's why most countries rather target their infrastructure (psps/banking etc ..) Even Eu countries had/have severe problems with Malta (due e.g Article 56A of the malta gaming act, which shields the operator from foreign judgements)
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - charcircuit 4mo ago
    Make the websites unconnectable from the US. Make domestic ISPs not route the traffic to the site else jail time for the executives. Make VPNs not route traffic to the site else jail time for the executives and being null routed by domestic ISPs. If you really want to crack down on it, then it could be done.
    - pjc50 4mo ago
      In the ancient days of 2011, this was done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg
- sumedh 4mo ago
  Because they know it will not work.
- streetfighter64 4mo ago
  People have spend decades in prison for selling weed. Now it's legalized in more and more countries. Making things people like illegal rarely works, and it's far from a "solvable problem". Don't get me wrong, gambling is very bad, but if we were to analyze it statistically I think alcohol is way worse for society at large. And we all know how making alcohol illegal went.
  - boelboel 4mo ago
    Legal weed has been a disaster in the US, 20 million addicted (almost daily use/daily use) versus a few million before it was banned.
    - streetfighter64 4mo ago
      Note that I'm not in favor of either weed or alcohol being as readily accessible as they are now, but there are a few things making that claim a bit dubious. The first is that obviously people are less reluctant to self-report using weed if it's legal. Secondly, the causation could be reversed, i.e. there are other factors in society contributing to both higher usage and larger general support for legalization. In any case, my point was that simply making something illegal with the threat of "decades in prison" isn't a very good solution. Gambling, drugs, social media, etc. are all "big business", there's money to be made because there's a demand for it. How to solve that I don't know, but just prohibiting it doesn't seem like a good fix.
    - watwut 4mo ago
      You made that claim up. There was a study of Some 22 million people around the world being dependent on marijuana. You are severely overestimating US addicted people. What about this: that policy was huge success, because unlike gambling, weed is fairly harmless.
      - boelboel 4mo ago
        https://apnews.com/article/marijuana-cannabis-alcohol-use-disorder-daily-9cec33f3ac513123c8ffc8b8b3141877 https://apnews.com/article/marijuana-cannabis-alcohol-use-di... Close to 18 million in 2022, not exactly 20 million.
- cataphract 4mo ago
  Seems very disproportional. Reminds me of that TNG episode where the penalty for every offense, no matter how minor, is the death penalty.

ok_dad 4mo ago

We should just make gambling illegal online again, things were fine back when you couldn’t gamble online then, at least in the USA, the fucking supreme corpo guzzlers (formerly the Supreme Court) interpreted the laws according to their owners will and now we have gambling online.

irishcoffee 4mo ago
Probation was a thing, too. How did that turn out?
- ok_dad 4mo ago
  You can’t download drugs and alcohol digitally. Frankly, being able to buy drugs and alcohol online is probably a mistake, too.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > You can’t download drugs and alcohol digitally It was almost certainly easier for most people to buy drugs than gamble illegally when both were illegal.
    - jmcgough 4mo ago
      Most states had lotteries before this though. At least those brought in tax money and were designed to be relatively fair. Online gambling can shut down your account and refuse to pay if you get too big of a payout, and their money isn't going towards public schools.
- nemomarx 4mo ago
  There wasn't some mass movement of people doing online gambling that led to the dam bursting and it getting legalized, though. Courts just made a different decision and opened it up one day and as far as I know there wasn't even mass lobbying about it?
  - 4mo ago

EA-3167 4mo ago

Just another hearty dividend thanks to corporate personhood and Citizen's United. Rarely has a single decision so thoroughly broken our system, but the regulatory capture is plain to see these days.

BrenBarn 4mo ago
Citizens United gets a lot of flak, and it wasn't good, but it's far from the only factor here. We can at least go back to Buckley v. Valeo which gave us the idea that "money is speech". Corporations are a problem, but money is a bigger problem.

j16sdiz 4mo ago

Most of their practice are illegal already. The problem is lack of enforcement. We are not suing polymarket. We are not suing the marketing company. And we don't want online censorship. IMO, the marketing company / media company should be sued. -- They are (relatively) easier target to sue. Many are US based and not going anywhere. With enough luck, this might give us a better internet with less SEO bullshit.

DANmode 4mo ago

The regulation has gone the opposite direction, recently. It was regulated.

aaron695 4mo ago

[dead]

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

what 4mo ago

>gambling sites I think I’d probably go farther. Next time you’re in a corner store or gas station, pay attention to who is wasting their money on scratchers or other lotto tickets. You shouldn’t be allowed to gamble unless you can prove it’s disposable income.

parpfish 4mo ago
we prevent people from gambling on early stage startups and risky investments by limiting investment to "accredited investors". same thing should apply to gambling.
- FireBeyond 4mo ago
  I believe some countries/casinos in Southeast Asia have policies that you either have to show a foreign passport, or put a deposit of $500-1000 down to enter the casino, that you get back when you leave, with the theory (easily exploitable, I'm sure) being that you can't leave the casino penniless.

parpfish 4mo ago

for a while i was using the sports gambling apps to make lots of little bets. it was fun to put $0.50 on a game I normally wouldn't watch and tune in with a real rooting interest. i never bet more that $1 on a game because I knew that I would really dislike losing 'real money'. the fact was that the stakes were completely irrelevant to me. the value came from definitively and publicly taking a side. if you're the fan of a team, you do this in every game. but with these little bets it's a way to sign-on for a little slice of being a fan in every game. and that got me thinking that there's potentially a different type of gambling app that ignores the money and is more of a social/prediction-making platform. people love chasing worthless internet points (reddit upvotes, HN karma, etc), so why not build a platform that gives you points for betting? you could let a chunk of the population scratch the itch they get to gamble without creating financial risk. they can still brag about their wins.

somenameforme 4mo ago
I'd do something fairly similarly, but in a sort of emotional hedge. If in a fight I was really rooting for one guy, I'd put a relatively small amount of money on the other. Ok 'my guy' lost, but hey - dinner's free tonight! It's also quite remarkable how often arbitrage opportunities come up where you can put bets on both sides with a guaranteed win. You'd think they'd all get eaten up by bots, but that's not at all the case.
- drw85 4mo ago
  Those are the dark patterns. Give a player that is hesitant a good opportunity to place a pretty much guaranteed winning bet and try to get them to cross their threshold. Once crossed, it’s much harder not to cross it again for most people.
bojan 4mo ago
> and that got me thinking that there's potentially a different type of gambling app that ignores the money and is more of a social/prediction-making platform We have that in the Netherlands and we do it massively for every World Cup and Euro. The app my friend groups are on, Scorito, has 1.5 million competitors for the current WC, in the country of 18 million, and that's not the only app. Normally a group would make a small buy in, like €5, where the winner takes all, but this year the legal department at work forbade that, se that sort of gambling Is actual illegal.

csomar 4mo ago

That will make things worse unless you reign in crypto. If you regulate Kalshi, people will use the unregulated polymarket which is already illegal in the united states.

kayalan 4mo ago

sports gambling has been going for several years in UK and several other countries. i dont remember anyone getting murdered over a lost bet.

rjmunro 4mo ago
It's been going for centuries in the UK. There have been murders: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/father-jailed-for-killing-daughter-in-fury-at-failed-football-bet-8550510.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/father-jailed-fo... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/gambler-murdered-woman-for-pounds-400-1508888.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/gambler-murdered-woman... It's a bit hard to find good stats, but it's at least 1 or 2 a year, it could be more like 10 - plenty of domestic violence is caused by money problems, and those problems can often be gambling related. There's a lot of suicides - between 250 and 650 people each year according to gamblingwithlives.org https://www.gamblingwithlives.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/The-Number-of-Gambling-Related-Suicides-in-the-UK.pdf https://www.gamblingwithlives.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01...

chris_money202 4mo ago

Have to remember that regulated gambling also has lobbyist so unless regulated gambling is invested in these apps they are likely trying to get them banned or also regulated

xpct 4mo ago

I'd say this goes for more than gambling. Since digitalization, we've removed a lot of friction from depraved behavior, and regulation hasn't caught up to it yet.