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points by whatisthiseven 1 day ago | 0 comments
Are you actually asking, or sea-lioning? I can't imagine anyone comparing these two whom has even a cursory understand of financial markets and gambling. Unless one has interests in gambling companies? Or do you gamble a lot and want to keep it legal? Why frame your question this way? Judge gambling on its merits, for which there clearly isn't any outside of entertainment.

Like, at least try to put effort to the comment to show you thought about it beyond the obvious propaganda of gambling companies. What, specifically, is the same? Why arent the differences important?

The apps know who the whales are. They make up 90% of their revenue. Ban them from taking money from whales, and the problem evaporates back to harmless $20 fun.

How to do this? Demand proof of income or assets and rent above $2000 in bets made in one year. Then audit these companies to ensure they are banning problem gamblers. If they are gambling or losing more than 5% of their net worth/income, that is a whale and they need to be play within their limits or get banned.

This is trivial to do, including at casinos. No one wants to do this because those companies have interests and that means their $100B+ scam industry is gone.

[–] howunfortunate 1 day ago
Having worked briefly in ads targeting, a big issue you'll face is that for every whale for whom this is a massive life problem, there's a whale who is just ~rich and this is their hobby.

I actually had a colleague who was a whale. Spent about $30k/yr on mobile games. He was staff level and made like $350k, single guy, so while it was hard for me to understand, it's also hard to say he was being duped or something. He just really liked the games, liked cosmetics, and liked to "support the devs".

These whales will be pissed if you ban them. Why should they be banned from their hobby because someone else can't be personally responsible?

[–] mrandish 1 day ago
> there's a whale who is just ~rich

The GP said "Demand proof of income or assets", so a 'whale' for whom $3000 a week is pocket change would still be free to squander it. There are already laws which require individual investors in private startups to show $1M in assets but online sports books and casinos are largely free to prey on gambling addicts.

These companies post little notices like "Addicted to Gambling? Click here for help" but then relentlessly optimize dark patterns in their apps to target and trigger addicts. Search and you'll find lots of documented evidence of shockingly abusive tactics.

[–] SoftTalker 1 day ago
Will never happen because state lotteries depend on whales just like all other gambling operations. You think the guy at the Quick-E-Mart buying $200 of scratch-off or Powerball tickets has enough income to call that harmless fun?
[–] tt24 1 day ago
What was the point of the first two paragraphs? Can you please edit your comment to remove them? They’re not helpful and don’t add anything to the discussion - this is not a venue through which to spread your vitriol
[–] kelipso 1 day ago
I didn’t read anything after you said sealioning but please stop accusing people of sealioning, and look up the definition while you’re at it too.