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Brazil Bans Online Betting

70 pointsby 6h agoreuters.com
37 comments
6h agoHN ↗

Betting, porn, onlyfans, should all be banned for a healthy society.

5h agoHN ↗

Yes. It's destroying the minds of our youth.

48m agoHN ↗

Adults and especially seniors as well. Grandmas and grandpas are glued to their feeds ignoring their own needs and often doing the same for the very young they care about. This is a cancer to society that doesn’t seem to be fixable anymore.

5h agoHN ↗

Betting causes clear social issues. People go bankrupt and their families with it.

What issues do porn cause?

3h agoHN ↗

Unrealistic expectations. Weird mind games that benefit neither party. Sexual exploitation of the actresses. Dopamine reward system mistraining. Computer viruses.

1h agoHN ↗

Makes loneliness easier to tolerate, so you can go for decades without actually solving deep issues in your life.

That actually applies to the other things listed here, too.

5h agoHN ↗

Also infidels, gays, short skirts, bad books, parties on Sundays, and beer. We can achieve that healthy society if we try hard enough!

5h agoHN ↗

porn

China and a lot of islamic and east-asian countries also banned porn and guess what, they're some of the biggest porn watchers in the world because VPNs are a thing and people are hooked for lack of better alternatives because their lives are not amazing and beating their meat to porn is one of the few cheap escapisms they have. If it's legal, at least it's a problem we can openly admit, talk and address through official education and care programs.

Betting

Same as above, it's escapism for desperate people. People gamble more when the economy and their lives are FUBAR, even if it's banned. You're focusing on the effect instead of the cause. We already tried banning vices before with prohibition and it didn't stop shit, it just moved underground. What I think should happen is gambling should not be allowed to be advertised at all both online and offline, and should not be so easily accessible like on your phone or close to where people live. People get hooked because the first hit so so accessible and frictionless nowadays and ads are everywhere. That needs to stop. You wanna gamble, go to a dedicated regulated casino far out of town and you can only gamble limited amounts, not be able to connect your checking account to the pokie machine.

onlyfans

That's the digital version of the world's oldest profession and it survived for thousands of years for a reason. Good luck banning it, I'm sure you can somehow end something that's been prevalent since the dawn of humanity.

I'm old enough to remember early internet social media sites of late 90s to early 00s, and women there were posting naked pics of themselves online FOR FREE, just to farm compliments and admiration from strange men online, and that was way before Instagram and onlyfans would allow you to monetize your looks. You won't fix the biological attention seeking female behavior and the male attraction to female looks, by banning onlyfans. I would suggest education, a strong father figure present in the family and therapy.

should all be banned for a healthy society

Like I agree with you in principle, that those things are bad and ideally should not exist, but the thing is that all of the above are effects of a decaying morally and financially bankrupt society full of atomized people chasing money and attention to survive and get meaning, that lack opportunities, families, strong communities, strong support networks and a societal fabric tying them together(in the past it used to be religion). They indulge in vices because they have nothing better to live for. Banning those vices won't fix this, they'll just find new hedonistic way to ruin their lives. The true solution is addressing the cause, not the effect.

3h agoHN ↗

Could banning forms of escapism lead to more confrontation of the things being escaped from?

3h agoHN ↗

Sure. Enforced by mandatory daily confessions to the 'Televisor', running AI according to the party lines rules. If some treshold is reached, escalate to a personal cup of tea in the next police station, with the possible outcome of retraining and reeducation in some closed to public institution for a while.

5h agoHN ↗

Also karaoke.

It doesn’t harm people. It’s just cringe.

5h agoHN ↗

Ban public live streamers too. Also for being cringe and a public nuisance.

5h agoHN ↗

And playing boogie woogie on public pianos in airports and railway stations. (Should have gone with this, it’s so much worse than karaoke)

2h agoHN ↗

A gentleman is someone who can play boogie woogie on the public piano but doesn't.

4h agoHN ↗

And left handed people.

According to my dad the Catholic Church tried when he was in elementary school, but he brags that Satan was too strong with him.

5h agoHN ↗

Recipe for winning: introduce a problem, watch society get destroyed by it while you profit from it, then when a big portion of the poor population has too much debt because of the problem you legalized, ban it and offer a solution a couple of months before the election. Save the people, get elected. Win win

5h agoHN ↗

I mean, they even cancelled a few taxes that they themselves had approved in the past, just before the elections. What a coincidence!

5h agoHN ↗

If only that actually matched history...

The so called "bets" were authorised to operate in Brazil in 2018 via law 13.756/2018, in the first year of Jair Bolsonaro's presidency.

Jair Bolsonaro, who was found guilty of Federal crimes and is paying his sentence under house arrest due to frail health, is the father of Flávio Bolsonaro, main adversary of incumbent President Lula da Silva.

So it is in fact the opposite of what you described.

5h agoHN ↗

Since you conveniently stopped at the beginning of the story, let me finish it for the sake of clarity.

In 2018, the president was Michel Temer, not Bolsonaro. Temer had been Dilma Rousseff's vice president and took office after she was impeached in 2016. Dilma, by the way, was Lula's handpicked successor. That December, Temer signed Law 13.756, which legalized sports betting but left the regulation for later.

That regulation came under Lula: on December 29, 2023, he signed Law 14.790, which set a licensing fee of up to R$ 30 million and authorized betting companies to operate legally in Brazil.

So, technically speaking, it started with a president elected on Dilma's ticket and was sealed by Lula.

4h agoHN ↗

Lula, Dilma and their party were opposition to Temer's government, so I don't think you can fairly attribute its legalization of sports betting back to Dilma and or Lula

4h agoHN ↗

Lula, Dilma and their party were opposition to Temer's government

lmao, this is amazing...

5h agoHN ↗

Lies. This was not signed into law in Bolsonaro's term, but rather Temer's.

And since you mentioned Bolsonaro's prison term in relation to basically nothing in the original comment, I think it's fair to mention Lula has also served a substantial prison term for what is probably the most massive corruption scheme in all of history, and had been released so he could run again though judicial maneuvering by a corrupt supreme court.

5h agoHN ↗

"Betting" was made legal by Temer (2018), the Bolsonaro administration (2019-2022) should have regulated it, but they refused to do so. Lula (the current president running for reelection) did finally regulated them back in 2023 (i.e., made them finally pay taxes and introduced a few protection mechanisms and data sharing obligations), however it was still a societal problem as you put it, which they finally fixed today by banning. Your comment makes it seem like the current administration allowed bets in the first place. That didn't happen.

5h agoHN ↗

As per your own words, they did allow it in the same measure as Bolsonaro's government did. Also, if Lula had indeed "regulated" it as you claim, perhaps things wouldn't have gone downhill to the current woeful state eh?

3h agoHN ↗

Being down-voted for speaking facts tells a lot about Brazil's current climate.

This was introduced and regulated as a way, i assume, to get taxes from those betting business, and everything was in fact legalized and regulated in the current government that was struggling with money. I saw a lot of people spending all of their money on that stuff and get broke. I have not heard a single thing about prohibiting that until very recently, and it's a great example of how the short-term memory of people can be exploited for social engineering (or political campaigns, they are very similar). It would be great if that was, in fact, enabled in the previous government so the current one would have prohibited years ago but we all know that this isn't what happened. At least it is going away and it's a net positive, but do not forget those who wanted to profit from it.

5h agoHN ↗

The same government that approved them now decides to ban them with 2 weeks until the next election. Wtg champs!

5h agoHN ↗

Brazil should ban motorcycles; I see the craziest vids from Brazil of people on motorcycles robbing and killing people. Wild place

5h agoHN ↗

Honestly this is a good thing, and we should ban online sports and casino betting in the US too. They add absolutely zero value to society, they just cause harm.

Studies have shown that most of the profit from online sports gambling for example comes from people with gambling addictions. These companies are just greedily sucking away money from vulnerable people. These companies really do ruin lives and destroy families.

I can see that maybe prediction markets might offer at least SOME value to society, so if I were made global dictator tomorrow, I wouldn’t ban them right away, but I’d definitely want to see more studies doing a risk benefit analysis.

5h agoHN ↗

Agreed. But as usual you gotta see it in the light of the upcoming elections only 9 days away, meaning they had over 3½ years to do something about the snowballing societal crisis and never lifted a finger. Quite the opposite actually, as Lula's deeply corrupt government actually issued the pending regulatory decree for betting sites and thus effectively cleared them to operate legally in the country

4h agoHN ↗

I'll go get some popcorn for this thread.

4h agoHN ↗

Wow, that is one badass move! Possibly the last time something like this can be attempted before bet money is so ingrained into power it's a non starter.

I was just starting to get bored going into October. It's going to be enlightening to see society now grind it out to decide whether it really wants to get rid of the industry.

3h agoHN ↗

Didn't we already get rid of the industry and then bring it back, a few times?