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Comment by jackfruitpeel | Hacker News Reader

The craziest thing here is that online gambling has been legal in the UK and Ireland for many years, and it's been such an obvious negative for those countries — and had been optimized brutally like any other tech product. When I moved over to the US a decade ago, I remember thinking 'well at least they're smart enough to have banned online gambling'.

I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to prey on a subset of humanity. I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired.

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I live in a state in the U.S. that’s had legalized gambling for decades. I grew up seeing gambling addicts walk around my city.

It’s always been bad, but in my eyes it’s so much worse now that anyone can tip tap on their phone and gamble away everything they have. At least you used to have to fly to Vegas or something to bet (and lose) big.

Same. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been able to take a course on the Economics of Gaming from William Eadington [1] , who was the founder of Gambling Studies.

Our final in 2008 consisted of two parts: predicting the electoral outcome of the Presidential election of each state where each state represented one percentage of our grade, and then a wager from 1-50 percentage points on whether the stock market would rise or fall the day after the election.

I wrote on the class message board that the only way we could possibly "win" the outcome of the stock market wager was to collude as a class. I also argued that placing a wager on the outcome of something that was inherently unpredictable shouldn't be used to calculate a grade. He agreed that collusion was a reasonable approach to the problem, but didn't budge on the unfairness of introducing wagers into a grading equation. What was a university in Nevada going to do? Sanction the founder of the field of study for the source of a large part of their revenue?

It was an excellent class, and I think a lot of the negative externalities of gambling that Nevada has reckoned with for nearly a century now are going to rapidly surface across the country as a whole unless this freight train is reined in somehow.

Growing up in Nevada, I think my relationship to gambling seems to be a lot like Europeans' relationship with alcohol - one of familiarity and temperance. We have some hard lessons ahead, and an unbelievable amount of financial incentives against putting this cat back in the bag.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._Eadington

>Our final in 2008 consisted of two parts: predicting the electoral outcome of the Presidential election of each state where each state represented one percentage of our grade, and then a wager from 1-50 percentage points on whether the stock market would rise or fall the day after the election.

Explain this more? Let's assume you're Nate Silver and predict the 50 state outcome perfectly - you have a 50% in the class, so failing? Then the only way to "win" is to wager 50 points on the stock market (doesn't matter which way it goes). Wagering less makes no sense, because you start at 50 and so going "up" 25 to 75% protects nothing as the downside is still way below failing.

It sounds like a game theory question - you should be able to get 40 points on the states easy enough even if you get the toss-up ones wrong, and then gamble the full total on the stock market (which in general should go up, the market loves certainty and hates uncertainty).

It was exactly a game theory question, and a perfect exercise in real world betting markets. You’ll never have the most information and you’ll never be the biggest fish.

I learned the lesson that day, and I’d argue that even Obama with 365 electoral votes and control of the legislature learned it soon afterwards. Being a naïve hopeful Obama supporter, I bet 50 points on up and lost my ass.

Nate Silver came into the national spotlight after his analysis that year. There were other polling prediction models out of Princeton, but I heavily relied on Nate Silver and fivethirtyeight. I remember predicting every state correctly except North Carolina.

Interestingly in the context of this post, the University of Iowa has been hosting a market for real monetary binary options on US political outcomes for 30 years now. [1] It’s probably some small stakes fun for Midwest market makers looking for some action during off season corn futures.

Other things we learned: - The players club at Harrah’s marked the beginning of the rewards points programs available at nearly every single seller of goods today. - Casinos, in cracking down on card sharp teams playing blackjack with a mathematical edge and who had been 86’d but often returned in disguise, developed software to identify people from security camera footage by their stride. This was in 2008. - Bet the pass line, and stack the odds behind your number. It’s the best odds in the casino and nobody likes the guy betting Don’t.

[1] https://iem.uiowa.edu/iem/

+1 please explain (and tell us your bet & final grade!!)

My friend's idiot loser husband got addicted to sports betting and day trading and lost their life savings and even spent kids college funds. She found out because he had started to apply for a home equity loan to catch up on some of his debts and they called her to verify some paperwork.

The only reason I found out was because she had a HUGE obnoxious gorgeous flower arrangement delivered to her at work and I asked her what they were for and she started crying and then told me they were his apology flowers - that he put on her credit card!

She doesn't want to divorce because their kids but I'm encouraging her to think about protecting herself and I sent her some attorney recommendation links. He's never had a decent job it's majority her income so divorcing isn't even that favorable for her now afaik. Sad situation.

> He's never had a decent job it's majority her income so divorcing isn't even that favorable for her now afaik

It is totally favorable, because he is going to make more debt. And if she does not divorce, she will be responsible for that debt. Moreover, money she earns after divorce are her except for the part of debt she is already responsible for. Right now, they are theirs, he has equal access to them and she is half responsible for his current and future debts.

> I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired.

Can't say I agree with that specific take (and find it a bit naive to be honest), unless you're also not hiring anyone from companies like Amazon, Meta, and all the other tech companies that have also ruined/preyed on society in their own way just as much as any gambling app has.

Morals start and stop somewhere, please don't attack people when they actually show some proper morals on this forum despite the employment of many members here.

It depends, if the morals cause more harm than they prevent, then no, the people espousing those "morals" don't deserve respect. They should be treated as naive which is what they are. Also, this is why we have the phrase, "virtual signaling" which specifically means a "moral" which causes more harm than good and seems to exist mostly to make the speaker seem more ethical than they actually are. Ignorance isn't a virtue and it shouldn't be treated as such.

Can you provide examples of morals that cause more harm than they prevent?

Why do you think virtue signaling causes harm?

Can you explain the relevance of 'ignorance isn't a virtue'?

> "virtual signaling" which specifically means a "moral" which causes more harm than good

Literally not what that means, at all. What a ridiculous assertion.

[flagged]

Wow. Glad i wont ever work for/with you. Not because i worked at any of those “bad bad” companies but because your take is a horrible sign of what to expect.

Like, if it was a pm or leadership person i can kinda understand it. They are the ones pushing direction. But what, some call center support guy is sol because his resume has kelshi on it? Not everyone is in a position to have luxury beliefs.

But if you are hiring people that have had that luxury, and yet have chosen immoral paths, what does that say about them and about you?

Sure, but the vast majority of even technical positions are not in the luxury belief bucket.

I definitely think there's a middle ground here, that the commenter to which you are replying may also be alluding. If a human is scanning resumes, job titles tend to be more important than the company, although both are obviously relevant.

So yes, if one is "Senior VP - Engagement Optimization" at e.g. Draft Kings, that would imply a level of culpability for "gambling experience = do not hire".

But if the title is "call center support - kelshi - 6 mo. contract"? Sure. I don't think the policy needs to be as stringent as all that.

Not necessarily disagreeing with either perspective, since they don't seem incompatible to me.

If it is your company then this is fine, it is your money afterall, and can do as you see fit. If you are employed or have co-shareholders, you are managing someone elses money. And you are not supposed to act within your morals, but those of the company. It would be kind of hipocritical to act on your own morals using someone elses money - up to the point where it could be illegal misapropriation. And then taking the moral highground and being judgemental about people because they worked in gambling is probably something one should reconsider.

> It would be kind of hipocritical to act on your own morals using someone elses money - up to the point where it could be illegal misapropriation

This is hyperbole. Refusing to hire anyone out of any of the big tech companies is an own goal. But being silly in management is absolutely legal. The only legal obligation I can think of revolves around disclosure, i.e. you should be open with investors and the company about the fact that you're putting up these moral guardrails, rails which may have effects on the company's competitiveness.

It is not black/white. If you have a qualified candidate that asks less money and reject them over a less-qualified candidate on the sole grounds they worked for a prediction marked, it could be called silly. If the discprancy in qualification and salary demends is high enough and you do this repeatedly, it can be gross misconduct and not only a reason to be fired, but to be held financially liable for the damage.

> If the discprancy in qualification and salary demends is high enough and you do this repeatedly, it can be gross misconduct and not only a reason to be fired, but to be held financially liable for the damage

Again, major caveat, if you do it without disclosing your reasons, possibly. And unless you're personally profiting from it in some way, highly doubtful on financial liability. (Disclaier: not a lawyer.)

Just put it at top of values or some kinda culture fit or hiring policy document, and youre fine.

PS: Not absolutely every company has to let go of all morals and focus purely on profit. Thats the beauty of companies, you can open and lead them for different reasons.

Im from Germany and there are many companies like that, there the Values (or a Mission) that are actually taken into account when decision making and sometimes you lose money but that's expected and normal.

Acting within your morals is not incompatible with serving the company's interests. Especially if it means your team is very much still competent while maintaining a culture that is healthy. That leads to better delivery.

Avoiding working in deeply unethical areas also shields the company from legal or PR liability.

It is compatible if you align your actions with the morals of the company. A big sign that you are not aligned with the values of the company, if you do not want anybody within that company (especially your boss) to know on what moral grounds you make your decision and justify your actions.

No, you should always follow you're own moral code.

Companies don't have morals, only people. Abdicating your moral responsibilities because you're employed is cowardice.

> up to the point where it could be illegal misapropriation

Huh..?

> And then taking the moral highground and being judgemental about people because they worked in gambling is probably something one should reconsider.

Ah I see.

Gross! There is no arena of life in which I can ethically abstain from adhering to my own morals.

I am acting on my own morals when I work, shop, flirt, cook, shit, and ride my bicycle! My morals do not get to recuse themselves just because a paycheck is involved! What sort of evil cope is this??

Hmmm,

So my friend works for a sports betting app and I personally do judge him from a philosophical point of view. I would never! Same with Meta, I would never!

But since I never once thought to de-friend him, I thought more about it. I leaned in. And TLDR: we are all part of this machine. Literally, everyone's work output gets bundled up into public retirement funds invested in these baddie public companies.

What's really the difference? Guy earns his paycheck directly, must be worse than all of us complicit to make money on stock market go up? Yes stock-market metaphor is intentional. The original gambler's paradise.

Sibling comments are right. Refusing to hurt people is a crime against money.

Sounds like there's a good chance your company is one of the few I'd want to work for then. I don't think I'd meet your standards though, having worked in decentralized finance in the past

Only a Sith deals in absolutes. You really think someone who took a job at Google as a bright-eyed young graduate is forever tainted and could never be worth hiring?

Big “you can’t fire me, I quit!” vibes.

I’m guessing the Venn diagram of “companies who won’t hire ex-faang” and “companies who can afford to hire ex-faang” is basically just two circles.

And none of them are actually hiring.

For us it just turned out that their experience and mindset wasn't really applicable or appreciated, and most of our peers felt the same way after the first round of ex-faang people washed through.

I think the difference between the two is Amazon and Meta do provide some utility to balance it out, whereas gambling is purely a net negative on society. You can be young and naive enough to believe you're "making the world a better place" in big tech. You can't work on pure gambling products without being a scammer at heart; you know what you signed up for.

You can, because the definition of gambling is loose. Magic The Gathering is gambling. You by a pack and hope you get a valuable card, no different than buying a lottery ticket and hope you win. Pokemon Go is also gambling. You pay to hatch eggs and hope you get a rare pokemon. I'm pretty confident the people who made these games don't consider their design to be evil or wrong. In fact, I'm sure they see themselves has having provided millions of people with fun entertainment.

I'd be slightly more specific with those assertions, and point them at the gambling mechanics themselves, although I do agree. The games are not inseparable from those mechanics, and are quite fun on their own.

I just got into magic, and am sadly watching my more gambling prone friends fall down that rabit hole. They keep asking me what cards I've bought or whatever and the answer is none, aside from a starter deck. I have literally zero interest in engaging with any game in that way, despite enjoying the booster pack gamble as kid with pokemon.

If I were to gamble, I'd much rather throw a couple bucks on who wins a game rather than what cards I'll get.

One of the only good things I got from MtG is Card Forge (https://card-forge.github.io/forge/), an open-source unofficial rule engine that also contains a desktop and a mobile app.

They allow playing a game similar to the old Shandalar from Microprose, in which you wander around a world dueling enemies (playing MtG against them), getting money and resources, and improving your deck until you can beat the big bosses.

It's one of the best ways to play the game: single-player, offline, and unofficial. Therefore you can have almost any card in existence without having to gamble with real-world money. It lets you enjoy the strategic part of the game and its meta, including deck building. The only downside is that the single-player game robs you of part of the charm, that is playing with other people.

Fascinating, thanks for the link!

Xmage is basically an unofficial variant of MTGO that does support actual multiplayer. All the cards are free, you don’t even have to grind to get them.

It is ugly as sin, but so is MTGO.

If we end up losing Magic The Gathering when we ban gambling, I will somehow find a way to sleep at night. Yes, all of these card games that are targeted at kids and young people are somewhat exploitative and are a pipeline into more conventional gambling games + whatever esoteric online pay-to-play stuff comes next.

I think Richard Garfield would not be a fan of the "gambling" or "speculation" parts of MTG. To the extent that they exist I do not think they contribute to the quality of the games or the amount of entertainment.

Really? Because he invented the gambling part of MTG - booster packs and then introduced drafting to get people to crack even more.

He’s not full time (or even part time) on MTG these days but he is often called in as a consultant.

Not to mention the ante mechanic, abandoned in 1995.

This comment would make more sense if it were before the new wave of prediction markets, which are high-profile gambling products clearly largely made and popularized by true believers who think they are making the world a better place.

Then you don't want to hire someone so insane as to think that gambling is making the world a better place.

> clearly largely made and popularized by true believers who think they are making the world a better place.

Is it clear? To a lot of people they come off as “true believers” in the same way as Kenneth Copeland and all the prosperity gospel hustlers. A lot of people thought Elizabeth Holmes was a true believer too. Easy to believe in something when it’s making you rich. Maybe VCs are just suckers for a bit of charisma.

Thinking gambling in any way or form makes the world a better place or just leaves it as it is, is utterly delusional and any contact (or support) with that person should be avoided like the plague.

Nothing Meta has done comes remotely close to paying for the damage they've done to individuals and to society as a whole. I think the metamates know exactly what they're doing. There are innumerable documents with people at all levels admitting to literal crimes and how best to cover them up or minimize them. These are the types of people you wouldn't let into your home for fear of things going missing.

this is a false equivalence. Amazon and Meta have caused plenty of damage, companies in our capitalist economies are bad etc. But shipping you books or connecting you to other people isn't inherently evil. There's nothing wrong with the service itself. Gambling is. It's been a vice in virtually every culture for thousands of years. It's akin to peddling drugs. The practice itself is corrosive and destroys people.

It's one thing to acknowledge that any for profit company in some way behaves badly, but you can't change the world. You can choose not to sell poison.

Between these I think Amazon is less bad. It's a monopoly & monopsony which causes a lack of innovation and (eventually) higher prices but it's also a much more efficient way to sell things and it doesn't destroy the fabric of society or anything. Meta though is just as bad if not worse than any gambling site out there. Its products are optimized to destroy your attention span, feed you polarizing content, destroy your mental health and waste hours of your time every day all while ironically making you less connected to other people because users won't get off their phones and have a conversation.

Amazon is not a monopoly. See Walmart, Ebay, etc. Lots of companies sell products online.

> (eventally) higher prices

I have not noticed Amazon charging higher prices than others. The difficulty in charging higher prices is competitors emerge.

Amazon extracts a lot of the value of a purchase from the seller's take. Sellers risk sanctions if they sell a product cheaper thru their brand website.

It's normal for wholesale prices being at 50% to 60% of what the retailer will sell it for. It's always been like that.

And those wholesalers would not do business with you if you undercut their retail price.

Amazon's practice is normal throughout the industry.

I know this because my business in the 80s would wholesale my products through mail order retailers.

Honestly, i think apple is worse wrt gambling then either meta or Amazon . Apple has been allowing and pushing “gamble-lite” products for years on the app store. So much gatcha game slop on there it is genuinely unusable for me. Even worse, they are now optimizing ad revenue for those that pay to push their crap into ads u cannot skip.

I seriously doubt mr jobs wouldnt take one look at the app store home screen and puke in disgust at how awful it is.

> There's nothing wrong with the service itself. Gambling is.

I think this is waaaay too black and white. Gambling can be fun, and there isn't anything wrong with enjoying gambling in a healthy manner. It is very comparable to drinking, I think. I refuse to apologize for enjoying the occasional drink or the occasional game of poker.

I like a poker game with friends, I enjoy sitting at a blackjack table for a few hours sometimes. I have even enjoyed entering a few poker tournaments.

There is a line between a poker game with friends, or even a professional poker industry, and a sophisticated tech company operating a nationwide low-friction gambling app, incentivized to optimize harming its users as much as possible. This line was enshrined into law until recently.

I agree, which is why I think it is going too far to say “anyone who works in the gambling industry is bad”

I have no problem with gambling as long we are absolutely sure its not done by children and teens, heavily regulated, strong limits (e.g. one play per day), required training or community memberships at addiction groups and things like that.

I didn't finish the full registration but Polymarket basically didn't ask about anything besides email and new pass. Maybe later when someone wants to bet but it should be harder and take a week at least like a cooldown effect, and never more than 100 EUR at a time.

There are many ways to heavily regulate it so that a few people can enjoy it at times occasionally but help those people who need it and make it very hard for them to come back. But then the income iwould be so small it wouldnt land on the news anymore.

PS: Not an expert in gambling and addiction, my concrete examples might not work but still I haven't seen other efforts so that was my point.

> unless you're also not hiring anyone from companies like Amazon, Meta, and all the other tech companies that have also ruined/preyed on society in their own way just as much as any gambling app has

It depends on the role. If you were doing something deeply technical, or facing customers who loved your work, I think you get a pass. If you were building features nobody outside your company is thankful for, you need to do a convincing repentance act. If you worked on Instagram for Kids or whale optimization, fuck off.

Building part of a killing machine isn't really something you can defend, even if you weren't working on the part of the machine that does the killing.

> Building part of a killing machine isn't really something you can defend

Of course it is. I don't personally have an issue with folks who worked on weapons of war. Particularly if they're honest with themselves about the work they did. Doubly particularly if they felt a sense of mission in it.

And in an integrated culture and economy, the difference between a person who happens to work at a company with an evil project in a random division and a person who grows complacent about politics with their non-problematic job is thin to the point of vanishing.

> > If you worked on Instagram for Kids or whale optimization, fuck off.

> > I don't personally have an issue with folks who worked on weapons of war.

Makes sense.

We all live in glass houses

Do me a favor. Go to Ukraine with someone who worked on the Javelin anti-tank missile and tell them that. I bet the guy who worked on the Javelin will be considered a hero. You will likely receive a kick in the balls for ever daring to criticize him or repeating your post. Your take is naive in the extreme.

What part? If you work on the manufacturing line for bolts, and one of the ten thousand bolts your company makes is sometimes used in cruise missiles, are you a munitions worker?

I think you're likely trying to say "the guy who wrote the positioning code" is as much a killing machine maker as the guy who loaded the explosives.

I remember a company during the interview asked me are things I do not work with or don't like, especially since they had a very diverse team culturally where e.g. some folks couldn't work on any kinda gambling resembling platform due to their religious beliefs.

I told them that TBH didn't think much before about it, appreciate the question and to answer: I could never see myself working on weapons used for war, products used by countries to repress their population (relevant due to my upbringing) or any kinda of mass surveillance system. The HR just noted them down but I saw every technical person smiled and understood truly what I'm talking about and they insured me that they so and so don't ever work on those kinda projects.

PS: before someone comes now and says "BUT DO U USE IG?!" No I don't use most social platforms but also if I did just because I'm flawed and the system isnt perfect, doesn't mean I'm gonna give up on all my morals right away and not choose better when I have the option.

Or the young person who needs a job and doesn't yet have OP's fully formed understanding of exactly where the line is - apparently gambling bad/ ad tech OK.

If they got a job at one of those companies, they could've gotten a job elsewhere. It's a specific choice, and "but I'm only 25, how could I possibly be expected to know right from wrong" isn't really an excuse.

I'd be ok with the rule only if the candidate liked the field. I respect anyone who is willing to have a bad time in order to put food on the table, and be upfront about it. There's plenty of psychopathic candidates where I won't get that datapoint simply because they were luckier with the job market.

Naive? I think it shows a higher than average level of awareness. Gambling is rent-seeking that targets vulnerable individuals. It's really only a small step away from dealing in addicting drugs; and is in some ways worse, because it addicts not just individuals, but also cities and countries who get used to the tax output.

I don't like Amazon personally. But how is it like gambling or social media? I guess shopping can be an addiction but wouldn't that condemn the entire retail sector?

> I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to prey on a subset of humanity

This triggers thoughts. I don't like people being taken advantage of. At the same time, I like my personal liberties.

It feels like you can spin this idea for nearly anything. Apparently 25% of alcohol sales are to alcoholics. That sucks and you could spin this has the liquor companies taking advantage, but I have tons of friends that enjoy drinking and tons of good experiences drinking with them (wine/beer/cocktails) in all kinds of situations (bars/sports-bars/pubs/parties/bbqs). I don't want that taken away because some people can't control their intake.

Similarly the USA is obese so you could spin every company making fattening foods (chips/dips/bacon/cheese/cookies/sodas/...) as taking advantage (most of my family is obese (T_T)) but at the same time, I enjoy all of those things in moderation and I don't want them taken away because some people can't handle them.

You can try to claim gambling is different, but it is? Should Magic the Gathering be banned (and Yugioh Card,Pokemon Cards, etc..)? Baseball cards? I don't like that video games like Candy Crush apparently make money on "whales" but I also don't want people that can control their spending and have some fun to be banned from having that fun because a few people can't control themselves.

I don't have a solution, but at the moment I'd choose personal liberties over nannying everyone.

The real litmus test for your beliefs is gun rights. Taken to it's logical conclusion you would think that you would be staunchly pro 2A.

I'm not sure my position on 2A but it seems you're making a pretty big leap to connect them.

Guns kill others. To me, that's a big difference. Gambling does not, only indirectly, you gamble your money away your family doesn't eat. But if you're going indirect than anything fits. Cars kill more than guns.

You could argue the similarity is that some people can be responsible with guns and others can't but you're back the previous point. Irresponsible gun use directly harms others. Irresponsible gambling at most indirectly harms others.

> Cars kill more than guns.

In most countries, but not in the US.

Just some context because gun violence studies are probably the most manipulated data sets in history. The two numbers (auto deaths and gun deaths) are pretty close to each other and different policies can and do push one above the other.

- Most of those gun deaths are suicides and the vast majority would happen anyway without guns.

- This wasn't true before about 2015 and the change (increase in non-suicide gun deaths) over the last decade is largely the consequence of 'defund the police' policies.

- 90+% of gun violence happens in about 4 urban zip codes, all of which have some of the strictest gun control laws in the US.

There is a reason you have never heard a criminologist rail about guns (its usually a sociologist). The data points to problems with other policies. Also gathering the data honestly is difficult; people stop reporting types of crimes when the police stop investigating those types of crimes.

PS A "curve-off" public welfare policy is far more effective than banning guns.

Not to get into a gunfight in the gambling hall, but:

> Most of those gun deaths are suicides and the vast majority would happen anyway without guns.

Apparently any form of obstacle between a suicidal person and their gun greatly reduces successful suicides.

Things like the gun being in a safe that McSuicidepants owns, operates, and can get in with a fingerprint. Things like the bullets being on the other side of the room.

Americans desperately trying to justify their firearm fetish is embarrassing.

> PS A "curve-off" public welfare policy is far more effective than banning guns.

Roll eyes emoji.

Alcohol, especially hard alcohol, used to have limits on advertising. Baseball is now literally sponsored by/partnered with Polymarket.

https://www.mlb.com/press-release/press-release-mlb-names-po...

Physical cards don't have the same 'whale' issue as electronic gambling/games on a phone that are designed to get you exactly to the point where you go 'ok, $20 more', that always is your pocket ready to feed that itch. No physical game/liquor store is using that kind of psychology or instant gratification (my understanding is addictiveness tied to action/reward length, with the most addictive things the ones with the most instant grattification?).

You also have an upper limit (which might be surprisingly high) with things like alcohol; nobody is drinking 200 gallons of whiskey a day, they'd be dead.

But nothing really limits how much you can burn gambling in a day. Even per app limits can be worked around with multiple accounts and multiple games.

Well I think a good way to differentiate things that are guilty-pleasures like a twinky and gambling is to take a survey of people and see what % say "I wish I had never ever gambled in the first place" vs "I wish I never had been allowed to buy twinkies"

It'd actually be quite easy to set certain sane limits on gambling like you can't gamble more than 1% of your annual income per year, but I bet gambling platforms would fight that like the plague because those are their whales, the true addicts.

I know 100s of people who've been to vegas and had a good time gambling, not one of them would say "I wish I'd never gambled in the first place". I personally know zero people who gambled so much they regret it. I'm not denying those people exist, but I suspect if you ask everyone, a very small percent have had a strong negative experience

Yes it's a very small % of the population, but it's actually a significant percent of the earnings of these platforms.

Just for illustration -- when I worked at Zynga they'd sell in-game purchases for over $10k USD for virtual items because there were people who just couldn't help themselves, and those "whales" were actually the bulk of the profit of the company.

That's why these platforms should have mandatory sane limits that can only be exempted with special circumstances.

It has to be regulated outside of the platform, because otherwise you just get people using multiple platforms.

If the maximum you could spend gambling each day was $20 across all online platforms, you'd not really have an issue.

> Well I think a good way to differentiate things that are guilty-pleasures like a twinky and gambling is to take a survey of people and see what % say "I wish I had never ever gambled in the first place" vs "I wish I never had been allowed to buy twinkies"

I don't think this is a fair comparison, because it is much easier to tie losing all your money to gambling than it is to tie your health issues to twinkies. For one, it isn't just twinkies, it is a bunch of different foods, and the consequences are temporally separated from the action; you don't eat a twinkie and immediately notice you are bigger and less healthy. Your heart attack will come years down the line, and there was no one action you took that you can regret, so the feeling is not the same. Gambling is very easy to feel the pain, you lose a bet and you lose the money, immediately.

I agree, to a point, but it seems like this is the false dilemma that comes up every time, meanwhile there are achohol, fast food, and gambling ads imbued in nearly all popular entertainment and everywhere in public.

Is severely restricting the marketing of those things not a valid step in between having or not having liberties? For an adult to be free to engage in gambling, does insidious advertising also need to be permitted everywhere? If say 25% of people engaging with a highly addictive activity can't responsibly regulate their behavior with it, is it important that we allow a contingent of everyone else to abuse them?

I think about it like property rights and others. If we want everyone to respect the idea of private property ownership, then policy should act to contain abuse of those rights and somewhat fairly distribute access to them. If only an older richer generation benefits, and everyone else pays rent and effectively has to give up those rights, then eventually opposition to them should accumulate. I'm much more interested now in seeing bans on the ownership of multiple residential properties within the same municipality at present, and sympathizing with people seeking a market crash, than I am to actually try and buy a house, because the ratio is so wildly in favor of one group over another.

If only 25% of people didn't know someone who ruined their life gambling—and it's only a matter of time—then it would be potentially acted upon much more severely.

> It feels like you can spin this idea for nearly anything. Apparently 25% of alcohol sales are to alcoholics.

I'd like to propose not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I accept this argument about gambling might be slippery-slope-able but I think it's pretty obvious to everyone without a vested interest that it's causing extreme societal harm.

Would you be opening to banning just this one thing and then calling it a day and opening the floor back up to such arguments? I think modern politics is too caught up in the bureaucracies of maybe to let good ideas be carried out - honestly, this thought line could easily be written up into an argument that parallels strong-towns. Local bureaucracy is rarely created for a downright malicious reason - here we have a change that could cause an outsized positive outcome so why should we get caught up in philosophical debates about how similar decisions might be less positive and let that cast doubt on our original problem?

> I'd like to propose not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I accept this argument about gambling might be slippery-slope-able but I think it's pretty obvious to everyone without a vested interest that it's causing extreme societal harm.

I am pretty sure anyone without a vested interest will also realize that alcoholism has caused extreme societal harm as well. I would say with pretty strong certainty that alcohol has caused more damage, and is currently causing more damage, than gambling. I would be VERY curious to hear someone try to make an argument that more damage is caused by gambling than drinking. Drunk driving kills about 13,000 people in the US every year. Drunk driving accounts for 30% of all traffic fatalities. THIRTY PERCENT! I am sure we all know alcoholics, and so many people have been abused by angry drunks. The raging abusive alcoholic parent is a trope for a reason.

So clearly, we should not get too 'caught up in the bureacracies of maybe' and go ahead and banning just this one thing. Surely banning alcohol will make the world a better place!

Well, we tried that. It was a horrible failure. It lead to the rise of organized crime, and that fact is STILL harming us to this day, almost 100 years after we reversed the decision to ban alcohol.

In fact, when we legalized alcohol, a lot of the organized crime moved into gambling, and have used the fact that it is illegal to fund crime for decades.

I also hate how sports gambling and now prop gambling has taken over. I don't think we should just sit here and do nothing, but there are a lot of things we can do that isn't outright banning, which I think is bad for a lot of reasons.

We should outlaw gambling advertising, just like we did with tobacco. I am fine with adding other restrictions, and placing more responsibility to identify and protect problem gamblers onto the gambling companies. I am open to hearing other ideas, too.

My biggest problem with your comment is the idea that we should stop thinking about the consequences of an outright ban and just go ahead and ban it now. This isn't a 'philosophical debate', it is trying to make sure your action doesn't cause more harm than good. I think looking at other vices, seeing how we deal with those and what has happened when we have tried things like banning in the past, to inform us about how we can mitigate the harm gambling does to our society is a good thing.

We ban other drugs though? Just saying that we DO ban things already...

Yeah, and that is a great example of how it doesn’t work.

an added negative aspect of going further down the banning path is:

it lessens the need (or signal) to improve education, or does it not?

Not talking about the theory part of education, more the parts that are not handled well in schools like e.g. (!) habits and understanding better what is behind your daily actions (often “Glaubenssätze” are the reason). Many important parts of education is assumed to happen at home, and only very much later I saw through close friendships to what and what extent (!) some people have to go through… not having grown up in a household permitting learning essentially important life skills (or usually worse… grew up with mindsets that make it very much harder to tackle problems in a helpful way).

TLDR: More banning can result in a weaker signal to improve aforementioned (!) classical education weaknesses, which can spiral into more problems, more need and calling for banning/micro-managing adults, more resistance, more damaging/self-damaging adult actions, … spiral (and bigger threatening fights over the different approaches and the very real felt need to restrict others to feel safe).

That is a topic that I think AND care a lot (!!) about, so very happy for comments pros and cons (but please in a constructive manner). Also very happy about private messages/new insights/blindspots/…

This is definitely an aspect, but it's also a continuum - there are some people who will "never" be able to be educated out of addiction. Something needs to be done to protect them (or we just admit there's a subclass of human who exists to feed other parasitic ones).

Why does it have to be either/or? Why not just ban the thing you don't want and just criminalise the whaling?

> I don't have a solution,

Just try to entertain any alternatives. Any at all.

There could be public option to opt-in to have your specific “personal liberties” curtailed, like for alcohol. Doesn’t affect you at all. Completely opt-in. Only for those who want it.

No solutions? Or no corporate-backed solutions?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47532954

What you're arguing for is more or less what the status quo has been for gambling. Like gambling? Cool! You can go to Vegas or a casino on native lands to do it. We have geofencing for mobile apps as well if you don't want to sit next to a smoker pulling a slot machine. Curbing it like this -- but not making it entirely unavailable -- acts as a buffer against the social malaise described in the article.

Personal liberties are overrated, and a functioning society is underrated. OnlyFans, sports betting, and junk food appeal to some people with low impulse control and high time preference in the short term, but have massive negative consequences on everyone in the long run.

Personal liberties being overrated is a wild take. I feel like this is one of those things that is easy to say when it isn't something you are interested in being infringed upon. I would be curious if you would feel the same way if people were trying to ban something you want to do.

The idea that prioritizing the good of society, rather than one's personal desires, is considered a "wild take" is just a reflection of the culture of narcissism you live in.

Again, it is kind of crazy to take polar opposite views on this.

We mostly all grow up starting off with very few personal liberties and gaining them as we get older. We routinely take them away from people of they show they cannot be trusted with those liberties.

At present that process is fairly blunt, but it could be more nuanced. And that doesn't have to mean micro judging every interaction like China's social credit system. It could mean to allow freedoms wherever possible, but curtail those freedoms, where it has a negative impact on the rest of us.

And I think the best way of doing this is to put responsibility on the person or group causing the negative impact. So the gambler who embezzles money due to the addiction is just as responsible as the company who enables their addiction. Why cant we send both to jail? Or if there is not enough cause to deprive them of liberty, divert them from jail under probation. For a company that could mean enforcing open books and monitored communications, to make sure they are on the straight and narrow..

What we need to do though is to value both society and personal liberty.

It's not polar opposite views, I'm just saying that personal liberties are overrated not that they're inherently bad.

There are entire political schools of thought that put maximizing personal liberty above everything, and the trend in America has been to allow more vices at the cost a functioning society. Sports betting just being a recent example.

> And I think the best way of doing this is to put responsibility on the person or group causing the negative impact.

Agreed. There are people profiteering at the cost of society and they should be punished for it.

> What we need to do though is to value both society and personal liberty.

Also agreed. We are not really that far off in conclusions I believe.

We probably could both be more nuanced with our statements.

What I hear when you say “the good of society” is that this means we would allow the majority to choose what is “for the good of society” and then enforce that on others.

You might not mean that. You are probably thinking of obvious “good” like not dying and not going bankrupt. But that is just what you are thinking of.

There are a lot of people who think other things are what is meant by “the good of society”. Lots of people think keeping trans people from having gender affirming surgery is “for the good of society”. Lots of people think requiring teaching the 10 commandments in school is “for the good of society”.

There are views like this on all sides. Some people think owning guns are for the good of society while some people thinking banning them is for the good of society. Some people think allowing people to eat meat harms society. Some people think gay marriage harms society.

So, do we allow all personal freedoms to be voted on by the populace? Or do we make the burden higher to infringe on individual freedoms?

Now, I do think we can place some limits when the damage far outweighs the cost of denying the freedom, but it has to really be worth it, because yes, individual freedom is very, very important.

The market producing what people desire is a functioning society. All the concern about so called addiction is simply a displaced puritanism disguised as humanism.

So, adults who gamble a lot never steal from their parents, siblings and friends in order to keep on gambling?

A father who gambles a lot would never threaten his parents or his wife's parents to stop allowing those parents to visit their grandchildren unless those parents give the father money for gambling? (I.e., the father is making the threat not because he judges the grandparents to be a bad influence on the child, but rather to extract money from the grandparents that the grandparents would not otherwise choose to give because they know it will just go to gambling.)

In your opinion, it is displaced puritanism to want to do something about the fact that in our society such things happen frequently?

This ignores the fact that as a society there are certain desires that are agreed upon as harmful, such as CSAM. Everything must have its limits.

You use the words "so called addiction" as if addiction is not an extremely well-documented pyschological (and in some cases physical) phenomenon. Gambling preys on the fact that the variable reward rate method of reinforcement is the one that produces the most dopamine in our brains. Unless someone is acutely aware of how they are being manipulated it is very easy to become addicted to something that is financially dependent on your addiction.

25% is too low, I think it's more like 80% of alcohol sales to drinkers that consume unhealthy amounts (whether that makes you an "alcoholic" or not is rather subject).

It's just not going to be a clear hard line. Would it be ok for alcohol companies to sneak in an additive that makes those who consume their product ten times as likely to develop alcoholism? I think that's a different scenario than just selling a product, and I think that there is a lot of corporate activity just like the former.

> I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired.

I appreciate your approach, but I wonder: would you hire somebody with a past in Meta, or ByteDance (to just name two)? They are at least as bad in pushing addiction to people, maybe worse if you think about the scale.

It's a very different kind of addiction.

Working in sports bettings is like working on an online casino.

They earn billions from pushing gambling as well, substantial portion of their ads.

A feed is optimized for engagement.

A casino is optimized to take your rent money.

The broader move, "you don't like X? so Y is good?," can extend forever. Defense contractors, payday loan apps, ad-tech...

Gambling and weapons (or "defence" depending on perspective) are two industries I refuse to work on principle.

On my deathbed I want to look back on life and feel I've made a small positive impact on the world.

If your deathbed is at the hands of an adversary that beat you because you didn't have any weapons, do you think your views might change?

> I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired.

I do not like gambling or the prevalence of gambling products, but this is not a good thing for you to do.

You should not ban people from your job for reasons that are not relevant to the job you're hiring for. People take jobs for many reasons, including some times simply needing to take the first job they can get in order to pay the bills.

People also change their minds. Working for a gambling product company doesn't mean the person is still pro-gambling.

or even if they are pro-gambling jeez would you never be able to work with someone you disagreed with politically

Having your job eligibility depend on your boss aligning with your personal morals on topics that have nothing to do with work is terrible

I'm surprised there's so much support for this in these HN comments.

Do you really want your labor enriching someone you think is a bad person? Do you want someone whose values go against yours being in a position of power over you?

Yes, I'm not so petty that I wish poverty upon everyone who holds a opinion different from mine!

I'm a live and let live kind of guy

And if they're not live and let live people? If they're working to ban or destroy something you value highly? To harm you or someone you care about?

thats reasonable, but its a question of degree. for me gambling and predictions markets dont meet that bar

Not wanting to work for someone or not wanting to hire someone is not equivalent to wishing poverty on them.

My daughter thinks shrimp are adorable little animals and doesn't eat them. That's a moral choice she has every right to make. She is not saying anyone who eats shrimp is a terrible person or trying to outlaw it.

> and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired.

I encourage this concept but also to expand it further, including the ones who work on other evil schemes like the ones used to violate your privacy, sell your data, and participate in sketchy business and/or contracts. Just like how I don’t want to work with someone who develops a gambling platform, I don’t want to work with someone who’s building a cameras spying on public, an app that use facial recognition against strangers, an app that track people, an AI to automate killing, a cloud that host and process such systems. There should be an open source database that has lists of all people who worked/working in such companies, categorized by industry (gambling, privacy, etc.), where anyone can look up potential employees, getting the names is easy when you have the best OSINT goldmine out there (LinkedIn), plus manual submission. Some people have no morals or intrinsic values to prevent them from working in legal yet shady businesses, those however will double think their decision when they know there will be a consequences and they won’t be hired anywhere else.

...or you could look at their resume. btw, maybe i'm missing the joke, but working on the system you're describing would put you on the black list.

The paradox of the paradox of tolerance.

Anyone who worked in it? Like someone who needed a salary took a job, and now due to your grandstanding they're locked in to keep working in that industry because they can't get a job elsewhere?

I'm not sure your virtue signalling has the effect you want it to have. In fact I think it has the exact opposite effect

The intended effect is to feel good about oneself, so I’m sure it’s working fine.

What this tends to largely accomplish is ensure that those who come from non-traditional backgrounds are further locked out of mainstream high-end tech jobs. If you grew up in a rough area with shitty parents, didn’t go to college, and came into the industry entirely self-taught there aren’t that may decently paying jobs in the field willing to hire you. The “vice industries” are some of the few typically willing to take a chance, while also allowing such a person to level up on relevant cutting edge tech. It’s generally that or working for a small company on 25 year old IT gear and often getting pigeon holed in those (low paying) roles.

And I’m not even saying that it justifies working for such places to many. That’s a personal choice of course. Just saying that it’s mostly a class signal vs moral one.

> have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired.

That's a bit cruel. Sometimes tech workers don't have the luxury of choosing their workplaces. Also companies pivot. So, say, a cryptocurrency startup might have later become a gambling website.

Or an AI company acting as a casino with offers, boosted usage and limits to get you addicted into spending more tokens + credits on their digital slot machine which accepts 'tokens' as an exchange for 'promises of productivity' and 'intelligence'.

If the output doesn't work, roll the dice again and spend more tokens.

Reminds me of the US healthcare system.

> anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired

Respect for that. Everybody seems to give up to all-powerful corporations and greed for short term profits seem to blind many otherwise brilliant folks into amoral and/or outright stupid shortsighted behavior and moral 'flexibility'. Nice to see good reason to keep some hope for humanity.

I do myself just a sliver of this via purchasing choices for me and my family, its a drop in the ocean but ocean is formed by many drops, nothing more.

Same in Australia and only recently (that is, in the last year) has there been any restrictions on showing gambling ads during live sports events.

It’s difficult to compare how normalised it is here versus what the US is currently going through.

As for sportspeople throwing games, well that’s been happening for as long as betting has been around as well, see countless examples from football (soccer) and cricket.

>Same in Australia and only recently

AFAIK Australia is most gambling addicted western country, loosing the most money per capita at the pokies.

>It’s difficult to compare how normalised it is here versus what the US is currently going through.

I remember how Henry Ford was giving his employee great benefits to attract the best workers so the Dodge brothers bought Ford shares to become shareholders, then sued Henry Ford and won because he wasn't doing what's good for the shareholders.

Similarly, I feel like if you'd try to regulate these anti humane businesses and practices you'd get sued because you're doing something that hurts shareholders.

It has been going on in the US for years - even when it was illegal, there was still illegal gambling and more then one person has been caught throwing games. Sports beet was always legal in Law Vegas though (at least from what I can tell), but most states banned it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rose#Betting_scandal,_per...

Yep. Gambling is Australia's version of America's gun problem. We've recently banned kids from social media, yet we're apparently unable to ban gambling ads from kids content. Every time the (various levels of) government here talk about even the tiniest new gambling related regulation, somehow - definitely totally without any brown paper bags whatsoever going into any back pockets - it doesn't seem to actually happen. Magic!

If you're from a place like Malta it's basically the only way to do IT and perhaps "escape" it later.

what do you mean legal "for many years"? it was never illegal. we have had telephone betting for decades, gambling for centuries...the reason online gambling was banned in the US was because the biggest donors to both parties requested it...there is no other reason because banning is a proven way to maximise harm (and even overly restrictive regulation has been proven to be very poor, as in Hong Kong).

thanks for telling everyone you are in senior leadership

Super surprised to see Ireland mentioned at the top comment here. I've always thought it catastrophic that betting companies could advertise on TV here, but never really considered how other countries compared to us. Is it really the case that we're outliers? Would love to see laws change here.

i live in a small midwest town and had the privilege of watching it slowly atrophy into near nothing over time. the steel mill closing, 2008 market crash, fentanyl crisis, covid, both shopping malls turning into liminal spaces frozen in 1994.

The real nail in the coffin was watching the Sears in the mall turn into a casino about a decade ago. Having failed their people at all other prosperities and futures, politicians turn to the last grift in their arsenal and roll out legalized gambling before packing up and leaving town or retiring.

having failed the digital future, ransacked it for every last penny, politicians again in 2025 turned to the supreme court to legalize online gambling and in doing so obliterate a generation of young adults. in another decade i expect a political movement to "hold these scoundrels to account" similar to Facebook, long after any meaningful reform or regulation could have been made and the industry itself is on the decline. just one last grift for the government that enabled it in the first place.

So cyberpunk is a real outlook after all hearing your situation.

Bold of you to assume we'll get biological immortality and cybernetics before an extinction event.

So you want them to keep working on those products?

Even at the best of times, the United States does not have a strong culture of observing or learning from other nations.

At the very least we should make it like smoking. Let people do it if they want but definitely dont allow advertisements.

> made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired

As in, even a dev, HR, etc person having worked for an online gambling company? I feel this may be a slippery slope..

Prediction markets are far, far more slippery. Anyone working at one of these places had other options & chose to sell their morals so I think it's perfectly reasonable to not hire them.

Presumably you include anyone who worked at any FANG, or Chic-Fila, or Elon-attached corp etc etc?

Don't forget the janitors. They're all accomplices of the peddlers of misery.

Everything is a slippery slope to somewhere. That doesn't mean you can't draw lines.

Doesn't mean it is wise to do so either. I promise you, 5 lines of your political beliefs and I can make you look like a hypocritical and ignorant a55hole to the world. And I can do so purely with data and various ethical guidelines.

I doubt you have though through most of your "beliefs" or learned of the policy consequences of many of your political positions. If you had, you wouldn't be such an absolutist. You still think you should be judge, jury and executioner over others? What are you, 6?

PS Your type of absolutist moralism has been the basis for most of humanities worst atrocities, stop it...you aren't more moral than other people.

I have no idea who you think you're responding to, but it's not me. Also, your angry tone won't convince anyone.

ok, what's buying milk at a corner shop a slippery slope to?

The extermination and/or enslavement of all mammals.

Oh, so the slope doesn't need to be plausible?

Actions have consequences. You can justify your actions however you want, and I can judge you for them.

I'm not sure what this moralising adds to this conversation, I was talking about hiring practises.

God forbid some poor soul who needs a job to feed their family works for a casino. snob

Here in the Netherlands we have a big building housing a pro gambling lobbyist organization. Their sole goal is to bribe politicians and spread misinformation on public tv channels. A typical example of rottenness inside the western society.

They’re the financial equivalent of recreational drugs.

Not everyone gets addicted, but many do. Harms your own health/assets. Can destroy lives. Has spillover effects into general society.

The libertarian/authoritarian argument is much the same.

Gambling is the only vice where the store doesn't close. Even the prostitutes go to sleep for a while. But you can drive to the casino and gamble it all away anytime.

It’s even worse on the phone.. there’s a running gag on IG with a lot of truth about “you might be at the bar with your friends at 12am but I’m locked in on German object splitting in half / other obscure betable ‘sports’“. It’s insane we let people do this to themselves and their families.

https://youtu.be/sMDppu-X1mY?si=MK7JGHYjW3u4iyBy

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, you are absolutely correct. It's exactly the same problem.

You can ban drugs/gambling, but some people are unfortunately just wired to seek them out and will do so regardless. So a ban results in fewer people using them in total, but all of the revenue going to the black market.

In an extreme scenario (for example, you ban a drug used by a large % of the population), that black market revenue becomes a real problem and you get Al Capone driving around Chicago with a Tommy gun shooting at people, massive corruption etc.

I wouldn't put gambling in that bracket but a significant minority of people are wired to enjoy it and historically when it was illegal it was a significant fraction of the revenue stream of organised crime, so completely banning it is not cost free - you will get a slice of violence and political corruption to go with it.

Having said that I agree there should be restrictions on advertising especially anywhere kids might be exposed to it

Care to disclose the company you work for? Is that the stakeholders stance too, or just your own? Did you disclose this policy to your bosses if any?

EDIT: Due to the downvotes without comments, here is my point: As an employee, you manage someone elses money in that position. As such, you have to holdup morals of the company and follow the companies interest, not your own - unless you are the 100% owner of that company. If you are not, and impose your own morals using someone elses money, you shouldn't be taking the moral highground here.

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