Alcohol is older than recorded civilization, while online gambling has existed for about half of one human lifetime, and has been mainstream for less than a decade. We're watching the negative consequences play out in real time. This isn't prohibiting something innate to humanity; you could still go to a casino and gamble before DraftKings existed.

10 years ago I had some friends who were into online sports betting. It required getting a VPN, accessing offshore servers, signing up for sketchy websites, and linking an online bank account. It was enough hoops to jump through that the average person wouldn't bother. Back then I would have agreed with you: let the people play! But I'm only 33 and I've watched online gambling cripple peoples' lives in just the last few years. It's a huge problem and should be made illegal again. You should not be able to access it in one click from the App Store.

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ryandrake a day ago | parent [-]

Just like all prohibitions, if you take away access to X, people will just find other (often illegal/dangerous) ways to do X. We can make gambling less convenient and push it back into the backroom poker rooms and illegal bookies who break peoples' legs, but it would be more effective to solve the problems of despair, desperation and hopelessness that are driving people to gambling in the first place. That's a lot harder, so here we are talking about bans.

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satellites a day ago | parent | next [-]

Gambling addiction has always existed but making it where you have to physically show up somewhere to do it is actually a highly effective deterrent vs. being able to click a button on your phone and get an app for it.

There is data from the past 10 years showing a direct spike in bankruptcies, divorces, foreclosures, suicide, and domestic violence (yes, really) as soon as DraftKings-style gambling is legalized in a state.

> despair, desperation and hopelessness

These are certainly factors, and yes we should have better mental health treatment and job opportunities in the US, etc.

But it's an incomplete picture of what's happening. There are billion-dollar companies with teams of advanced psychologists crafting the most addictive experience possible, and specifically targeting problem gamblers, with these new apps. It's industrialized and predatory. People with happy fulfilling lives and careers are still falling for it, not just hopeless impoverished people. Saying it's only about mental health and despair is framing it as an individual failing and ignoring the huge industry creating it this way.

The apps and the companies behind them really brought in a dangerous paradigm shift and the data is already here to show it.

	▲	csnover a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> There are billion-dollar companies with teams of advanced psychologists crafting the most addictive experience possible … It's industrialized and predatory. Sorry, I thought this was a discussion about gambling, not Facebook and TikTok and YouTube and Whatnot and OpenAI and EA and Roblox and every other company that invents a problem (oh no, your hair isn’t shiny!) and uses psychological manipulation to sell you a solution. :-) Jokes aside, the fact that this sort of predatory behaviour is showing up in multiple industries with broadly similar characteristics (giant corporations with immense wealth concentrations who are not part of the communities they serve and whose only interest is in sucking up all the money) suggests that there are some deeper problems here, and that focusing on the gambling industry is focusing on a red herring (or perhaps the most obvious canary to date, to stick with bird metaphors). > Saying it's only about mental health and despair is framing it as an individual failing Not at all! Despair is the outcome of a broken system.
	▲	cindyllm a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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creepypastor a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Should we let minors buy cigarettes?

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vasco a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Legalize murder so people aren't forced to do it in the backrooms. Think of the murderers, they'll get their legs broken otherwise!