Obviously “AI”

At least those often fund things like state education so, over time, the pool of victims is maybe lessened by the success of the program? Maybe?

You have some numbers to check.

(“Elaborate thoughts” aren’t needed here - are more people spending less on the lottery? where does each state spend the money?)

See nature preserves that are funded by regulated big game hunting of the preserved nature.

It's a fun moral question. At what point do you give up trying to make someone/a population healthier and say "well if you're going to be this way, we might as well get some use out of you"?

In many places where gambling is banned, there is still gambling. And in places where it's legalized, it can (in theory) be effectively regulated (if there's political will, which is difficult to muster sometimes). And say what you will about lotteries, but it's far easier to blow your life savings at casinos and with sports betting than buying a bunch of lottery tickets.

The incentives driving state lotteries are not nearly as strong as those driving private companies like Draft Kings but yeah not great either.

Used to work at 7-Eleven and we would have people come in and out for hours on end pouring money into scratch tickets.

State lotteries are just a regressive tax targeting the poor.

I've got plenty of negative things to say about state government lotteries, but the ones I'm familiar with are structured in less predatory ways. It's hard to spend thousands of dollars on lottery tickets, and impossible to do so in a way that won't feel obviously stupid, especially since you can't buy them on your phone.

Smoking tobacco is an unpleasant sensation.

I disagree but maybe I’m just addicted.

I've seen this "it only affects problem gamblers" thing so much that I suspect it's an intentional strategy to shift blame that takes advantage of people's natural tendency to believe the just world fallacy (bad things only happen to bad people).

Gambling is absolutely inherently addictive as it's essentially perfectly paired with your brains reward system and hijacks it. There's literally dopamine cycle and tolerance happening. And when compounded by algorithms and notifications which are designed to amplify this even further I'm not sure how you can think it's not inherently addictive.

The real number we want evaluate is "what percent of the revenue comes from people experiencing significant negative consequences from the product."

For alcohol that number is something like 2/3 revenue from the top 10% of drinkers, who drink an order of magnitude more than the decile below them. I doubt gambling is very different but if you have more info I'm happy to hear it.

Not just mobile games. Roblox is basically an online child casino, powered by child laborers being compensated in Robux scrip. Fortnite isn't much better. We'd do a lot of good by regulating these games better too. The gambling addicts who got hooked with these games will move on to DraftKings when they're older. DraftKings knows this is their pipeline and has been investing in esports and video games like Call of Duty and establishing partnerships with Riot Games and Activision Blizzard.

What is your point? Bad thing happened in the past, we should continue to let bad thing happen?

Most people find current system of gambling from phone to be too much. Forcing people to physical location and limiting advertising can be good harm reduction without causing increase in crime.

What usually happens is they talk about statistics rather than demographics. Eg “when doing x we’ve seen a 5% rise in engagement but a 50% rise in spend from those engaged”

Nobody is actually blind to the reality of the stats but this kind approach makes it both easier to dehumanise their actions as well as giving them plausible deniability when asked if they target specific demographics such as addicts.

This happens at every gambling company in regulated markets like the US or Europe.

No something clearly different happens in regulated markets. There's a massive difference between "This would make us more money, but we won't do that because it's unethical" and "I wish we could get away with doing this unethical thing to make more money, but sadly current regulations make this one unprofitable for now. Lets increase our lobbying spend to try to fix that."

Again, the same mistake.

Yes, it happens to every gambler who spends a lot of money. That is how VIP tiers are defined, based on how much you spend. There is no way for them (or anyone) to understand the customer's state of mind. Should it be illegal for retailers to offer customers discounts? Compulsive shopping is significantly more common than gambling addiction, do retailers target those customers?

If you never want to gamble, you tell the state regulator you never want to gamble and you will be unable to use any site.

we should also regulate them to ensure that they do and punish them meaningfully when they fail to

Fully agree, that's what I mean.

"I'm not entirely sure when people started to have this idea that when they walk through a company door, as if this is some magical portal into the realm of amorality, give up their human responsibilities and faculties"

how can you became this naive ???? this is literally a company that get profit when you a lose

for their ethics, its inline with company mission

I expect those people to behave ethically at any given time.

A company is set up and incentivised to maximize a profit function, and that in turn incentivises prompoting people which are not impeded by ethical considerations. The hierarchy furthermore ensures that people which would otherwise act ethical, don't, for fear of losing their job. This structure behaves ethical as long as you put ethics in the profit function.

Meaning that, should they get the memo, they’d change their behaviour to that of a legitimate business? Not being combative here, just not sure I follow what you’re saying.

People in companies that are a negative public good are by definition unethical. I'm not surprised by anything they do. The real problem is how we've let these companies infiltrate so much of our society so fast. I can't consume any ad supported media without getting some ad about them. This company really defines the phrase "money talks"

Prevously on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49765288

Passive income? I need massive income.

Anybody seen those billboards? It’s disgusting.

and also blasted into your face at any opportune moment (TV, billboards, print media, in person conversations)

and upset at losing money—even if I net win, I’m irritated about the incremental losses.

While you don't appear to be susceptible, it is notable that this mindset is not something that makes you less likely to develop a gambling problem. It's actually part of how they drive addiction. A customer who is annoyed at every loss is often a customer who will chase their losses with more/bigger bets, trying to get the winning high back.

I don't watch sports much, but the last times I did they filled the screen with ads for gambling in the middle of the games while they were being played

Legalizing targeted advertising was a massive mistake too.

At least where I live it is explicitly permitted as long as you get government authorization: https://igb.illinois.gov/sports-wagering/sports-authorized-o...

I think legalizing cannabis was more about not jailing people for consuming a plant.

It's hard to respect a legal system that jails someone who wasn't hurting anyone. Repealing a law that criminalize victimless behavior, especially when so many people already break it, paradoxically increases respect for other laws. It reinforces that the law serves a purpose: protecting people and promoting the general welfare.

And yet somehow education still doesn't seem to have enough funding, despite the lotteries raking in cash.

It would be fairer if the state returned the money to taxpayers and funded education out of the general fund.

No one will sell you any stocks for $1,

You have been able to buy mutual funds in dollar increments for like forever, with the significant caveat that there's often a minimum purchase amount, but once you hold that you can add in single dollars if you want +/- they only deal in a certain number of decimals.

Fractional share trading of stocks and ETFs happens at a lot of brokers for the past several years, too. Do they really want you to buy $1 of BRK.A? probably not, but you probably can.

Also, there's like penny stocks. :P

But yeah, there's no mechanism for that $1 to turn into millions of dollars within a few days. It can happen with a very well timed purchase, many decades, and some inflation, but that's not very exciting.

Expected return on a total market fund is 9 to 10% annually. Expected return on a lottery ticket is 30 to 50 cents on the dollar.

Just like AI p(Doom) in the next decade is approximately zero, but we all have to pretend to it's between 1 and 10% so American frontier labs can implement regulatory capture.

So if what you're saying is you are willing to bet $1 if I give you a 1 in 1 billion chance of winning $1M, I will take that bet. And I will take that bet as many times as you'd like.

But your best chance of winning $1M? Start with $10M.

When widespread sports gambling was illegal before, there were not rich and powerful people whose ability to maintain and grow their wealth and power was tied to keeping sports gambling legal.

Now those rich and powerful people exist, and they will use their wealth and power to keep it legal. It is not easy to put the genie back into the bottle.

Sports gambling definitely existed 10-15 years ago. And it's hard to ban things on the internet with cryptocurrency being a thing.

It's pretty wild that we let it be advertised and boggles my mind that pro leagues jumped on the train.

The difference is that the regulator controls your licence to operate. So if you do something that fails to meet the guidelines they create for responsible gaming then they take away your licence.

Acknowledging the problem doesn't make it go away: you must be a big war on drugs guy? right?

It's hard for me to view that as anything other than mostly for show.

The retailers still have every incentive to sell as many lottery tickets as people will buy, because that's how they make a sizable portion of their money.

And the gambling addiction hotlines are too little too late. I've known people who struggled with gambling. They never admitted they had a problem until they had bottomed out. At that point I doubt the lotteries and casinos particularly care because that well's already run dry, anyway.

If the gaming industry really wanted to put their money where their mouth is on this one, they'd figure out ways to prevent people from getting into that situation in the first place. Putting limits on how much money anyone person can lose, even if only at a single establishment, is one idea that wouldn't even be hard to implement. But of course we won't see that because, unlike gambling addiction hotlines, that runs the risk of reducing their profits.

“Gambling company leans into its target demographic”

This was my takeaway as well. Is anyone surprised at this outcome?

I worked with a state lottery that did similar things. Their target demographic was the “every day players”

That's wild. Wasn't the whole point of having a state lottery to put the state in a better position to be able to discourage people from becoming addicted? The very idea of a "target demographic" seems contrary to that goal; the "target" should be to have nobody buying tickets.

I'm shocked. Shocked!

Ban this shit. Fuck anyone who works at these companies.

How do you frame that to rein in Meta and Google? That would be a good start.

Cool, but you're not running people's finances at scale. It does not compare.

This should come as no surprise

We need a better way of responding to journalism evidencing what was previously suspected and accepted.

Hooray capitalism!

I frequently get DraftKings ad on YouTube featuring Kevin Hart and Nick Jonas, they're pushing the information that it is now legal in every state.

I also get loads Polymarket and Kalshi ads. Polymarket seems to have invested tons into featuring mega celebs like LeBron in one of their ads. Other ads feature influencers showing off how to trade and such. More obnoxious part is that these companies pay influencers to talk about trading and winning live on streams- without disclosing they're paying those influencers.

Polymarket even set up fake website where influencers showed they were winning hundreds of thousands of dollars. You wouldn't find those bets on the real Polymarket website.

Really this is the entire economy now, giant companies that have billions invested in mass surveillance and heavily min-maxed dark patterns targeting the wallet of the average unsuspecting consumer. Nonsense subscriptions that are impossible to cancel, replacing ownership with "license", customized pricing, endless advertising, zero customer service, shrinkwrap licenses that change daily, etc etc etc.

Back in my day this was called machine learning.

"In the United States, to be considered an accredited investor, a natural person must have a net worth of at least $1,000,000, excluding the value of one's primary residence, or have income at least $200,000 each year for the last two years (or $300,000 combined income if married) and have the expectation to make the same amount this year, or must otherwise be a holder of a specific license in good standing."

Of course you can still lie but legally there is a line.

The standard may be higher, but the implementation is "This is what it means to be accredited: are you accredited? By the way if you say no, I can't sell you the thing I've been trying to convince you to buy."

If you had to take and pass a test, that might filter out more people; although I'm sure the seller would help you pass the test, so maybe not.

GP didn't say test. They said "self-reported knowledge [about yourself]". Which is correct.

I believe there are "casino games" on Apple and Android stores that are similar to actual gambling, you just buy "tokens" that can never be redeemed for cash.

Proof if proof needed of the complete pointlessness of casino gambling. Some people will still do it even when they know they can't win anything.

"You show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome"

They actually don't. That's the problem.

https://prospect.org/2026/07/07/economic-hit-men-for-gamblin...

Except online poker (here in the states)! Gotta keep that one prohibited. Now, betting on every freethrow Joe BBall takes in a game ... we're morally good there. It's those pesky immoral cards we have a problem with!

Some betting company made a partnership with my area's public bus system to put their ads on the side of the bus. There is no recourse for this, it seems, and this explosion of gambling ads is only going to get worse.

If you are vetting a romantic partner or a business partner, I would strongly urge you to check their phone. If they have DraftKings or FanDuel installed... run. Some might even say they lose some but it's for entertainment. I'd still trust them less than a social heroin user.

You will find a lot of people who will tell you they win at these things. They don't. How do I know this? Because if you win consistently, they kick you off. You're bad for business because the pigeons need to win occasionally to keep playing (and losing).

Gambling (and I include Kalshi and Polymarket here) shouldn't be this accessible. Back when you had to go to a casino, it was still bad but that barrier prevented a lot of harm. Being able to gamble away your future and your family's future from the comfort of your phone simply shouldn't be allowed.

What do you expect? They thrive on addicts. No different than NYSE:META, and NYSE:RDDT, and NYSE:BUD and NYSE:TAP and NYSE:(fill in whatever proven-to-be-addicting product you want)

The EFF isn't saying it's a surprise that companies are doing this. Nobody's surprised by that. They're drawing attention to it and saying they shouldn't be allowed to.

Why only online?

Another perfect example of why we don't need new laws, we "simply" need to enforce them. Supposedly, Dark Patterns are illegal. If the corporation had to tell you how they use your data, would you let them?

DraftKings: Hi we're going to give you extra incentives! User: Hmm, sounds like I might like that. How do I get them? DraftKings: You have to lose constantly! And then when you start winning, we take them away! You like that, don't you? User: No.

Dark Pattern. No new rules needed. "Just" enforcement.

Michael Lewis did a similar series for one of the seasons of his podcast.

What amazed me was that Chris Christie (then governor of NJ) used state money to fund SIX consecutive lawsuits trying to get online gambling legalized in New Jersey.

We will soon look back at these companies like we did the pharma companies that created the opioid crisis in America.

And by that I mean almost no one in charge will be held responsible.

meanwhile, free-to-play gaming's business model is to speedrun through the population via ads to find the most mentally unwell or underdeveloped people with access to credit cards or at least grandmothers who will buy them gift cards

Why wouldn't they? We have no consumer protections so this type of thing is happening everywhere all the time on every level of society.

People with personality disorders, depression, anxiety, etc. all algorithmically being plied for attention. It's disgusting and nobody is doing anything about it, which will eventually erode buy-in in the system until someone is willing to let it all go without an adversary even firing a shot.