Comment by bsder
8 hours ago
> Scamming of gambling addicts is tragic but not detrimental to society.
I used to believe that. With the legalization of all the sports betting and how fast it can drain a gambler which can then affect the gambler's family, I'm now pretty much on the other side of the fence.
Just like we banned public smoking because of the effects of secondhand smoke, I'm pretty convinced that the secondary effects of gambling means it needs to go back to being banned. I don't see an obvious way to legislate gambling to prevent the auxiliary victims. It doesn't help that getting maximum profit as a bookie means being part of a group of the scummiest people on the planet who will stoop to anything to drain people of their money as fast as possible.
The sports betting sites even have account managers who are tasked with keeping people on the sites even after the user has decided to quit. It’s so lucrative they can afford to pay people to sit and text gambling addicts.
This is common practice in gambling and now games, too: Zynga has 'VIP' teams for high-spending free to play game customers, they would talk on the phone at length, get to know them, fly them to Vegas for jaunts, etc. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-does-zynga-hunt-for-whales...
> "We've done so much experimenting at Zynga with VIP. We know what's the frequency of contact. We know what call types work. We know what times to call. We know exactly who to call and when. We know who has a higher propensity to be more susceptible to our call."
Video games are massively under-regulated to the point where we've basically got online casinos specifically targeting children. It's so gross.