points by howunfortunate 1 day ago | 0 comments
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?
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.