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UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

theguardian.com

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Re: UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

#81

Post by rcxdude »

tialaramex wrote: post #49
GlacierFox wrote: post #5

I've never made a bet before, on an app or in a betting shop and have no inclination to ever do so. However, in the UK I'm bombarded with gambling (bingo and 'games') advertisements on daytime TV aimed at trying to convince me it's actually in some way fun to pittle away my money. Then if I watch anything after 10pm on a UK streaming service or live advertising funded TV, I'm absolutely battered with endless gambling…

I have made exactly one actual bet for money. In December 2020 I bet that Donald Trump had lost the US Presidential Election, which he had done the previous month. Ordinarily of course you can't make bets like that because nobody wants the other side of the bet†, but there were plenty of takers for "No, Donald Trump actually won" so I got paid off, it wasn't a huge profit but it was meaningful. † There are two ways y…

This is a common issue in prediction markets: they tend to look nonsensical at the extremes, because if you're betting on 'sure outcome', then the main issues are a) counterparty risk, i.e. the risk that the payout is not awarded correctly, and b) opportunity costs, as the margins can be slim enough and the payout date far enough away that you've got better things you could do with your money.

Re: UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

#82

Post by hbrav »

FerretFred wrote: post #2

The government will never intervene while the UK gambling industry contributes so much money. In 2022, the total figure was about £14 billion. See https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/report/annual-report-a...

I don't believe this is creating £14B of value. It's transferring £14B from people (I suspect largely poor people) to those firms.

We should crack down on these firms. They're a net negative for Britain.

Re: UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

#83

Post by OKRainbowKid »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #68
spencerflem wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think heavy drug use is more a symptom of hopelessness than the other way round

I dont think so. I believe The starting point is often mostly functional people, Some of these have major problems which are struggling to manage. Drugs can lead to a decent path with the end stage of hopelessness and massively more problems than they started with. I think early intervention is possible, and how it works for the vast majority of people. Not everyone who has a beer or line of coke starts off miserable…

I had to read that sentence three times before realizing "decent" should be "descent".

Re: UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

#84

Post by southernplaces7 »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #14

I'm in the UK and have been applying for dev jobs over the last six months. I've had at least five approaches from recruiters representing gambling companies. They seem to have a lot of money to spend on salaries, and promise experience of languages like Go, and also ML, data science, etc. I always give them the same answer: no. I don't work for parasites. I remember the time before the Blair government unwisely dere…

>I always give them the same answer: no. I don't work for parasites.

Feel like specifying what makes them so distinctly more parasitic than, say, a company like Google or Facebook? Both of which many people here seem to have no trouble working for.

Re: UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

#85

Post by giantg2 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #76
giantg2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have there been any governments in the developed world in the past 25 years that has actually stood up for the poor? I know some have said they would but it seems like their ideas are just expansion of benefits programs that don't actually help the problem or move the stats. Seems more like buying votes.

Japan has dramatically expanded social benefits for young families in the past 25 years. I would say these programmes mostly benefit the middle class and below. The US didn't have national healthcare before President Obama. Millions of middle and low income people are now insured under that programme. President George W. Bush helped to add coverage for prescription drugs to Medicare (national health insurance for ret…

But what did those do to reduce poverty numbers? As I said before, there were expansion of benefits, but it doesn't seem to have reduced the poverty numbers.

Re: UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

#86

Post by giantg2 »

nejsjsjsbsb wrote: post #75
giantg2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do that doesn't crush souls?

Podiatry?

Isn't it possible you could make a mistake that maimed someone? Or that the medical billing is burdensome to some people? On the whole you might be helping people, but I would think there's a small minority that is negatively impacted too.

Re: UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

#87

Post by giantg2 »

Tostino wrote: post #69
giantg2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you work on now that doesn't have real negative impacts to individuals or society?

The last company I co-founded was software for helping accounting departments for (primarily food) manufacturers make sure that their customers were getting the correct discounts laid out in their contracts, and they weren't over or underpaying. Helped them detect fraud and mistakes with their distributors / retailers. Called "trade promotion management" software if anyone looks into it more. That was my last decade…

What about obesity?

Trade promotion is about short-term push strategies to get people to buy more. So things like cheaper sodas, chips, and other processed food could contribute to obesity. There's also massive food waste in the industry for the healthier options, but none of the trade promotion software I read about talked about reducing waste. So there can definitely be negative impacts in the food industry that you are enabling. I would bet that there's not a single job that doesn't have some negative impact.

Re: UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

#88

Post by snakeyjake »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #84
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #14

I'm in the UK and have been applying for dev jobs over the last six months. I've had at least five approaches from recruiters representing gambling companies. They seem to have a lot of money to spend on salaries, and promise experience of languages like Go, and also ML, data science, etc. I always give them the same answer: no. I don't work for parasites. I remember the time before the Blair government unwisely dere…

>I always give them the same answer: no. I don't work for parasites. Feel like specifying what makes them so distinctly more parasitic than, say, a company like Google or Facebook? Both of which many people here seem to have no trouble working for.

The number of people who have lost all of their money and then killed themselves using Google and Facebook is not zero.

It's a fuckton lower than the number of people who have lost all of their money and then killed themselves due to betting.

The morality line for me is at an unknown and unknowable (and you'll just have to deal with that I am a human not a computer) position that is higher than Google/Facebook and lower than gambling apps.

edit: lol no never mind, on further self-examination I would rather starve to death under a bridge than work at facebook trying to figure out how to use AI to addict people so that they buy dropshipped garbage from our advertisers and not the other guys.

Re: UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

#89

Post by Tostino »

giantg2 wrote: post #87
Tostino wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last company I co-founded was software for helping accounting departments for (primarily food) manufacturers make sure that their customers were getting the correct discounts laid out in their contracts, and they weren't over or underpaying. Helped them detect fraud and mistakes with their distributors / retailers. Called "trade promotion management" software if anyone looks into it more. That was my last decade…

What about obesity? Trade promotion is about short-term push strategies to get people to buy more. So things like cheaper sodas, chips, and other processed food could contribute to obesity. There's also massive food waste in the industry for the healthier options, but none of the trade promotion software I read about talked about reducing waste. So there can definitely be negative impacts in the food industry that yo…

It's not the job of the promotion software to reduce waste. There is plenty of other software and tools to help with that, but it isn't part of what I worked on.

There is demand forecasting software, and there are also logistics tools for things like tracking product temperature from farm to shelf to make sure it stays within the acceptable range...

Those are different tools though, and not the purpose of their TPM package.

So sure, there are absolutly knock on effects to anything you do. I don't think I am enabling these companies to sell any different products than they already were. All it does is find when the distributors or retailers are trying to say "you owe me $100k because I bought N of X product at Y price in the last month" and we know they are really only entitled to $70k, we give our customer the info to go talk to that distributor or retailer and say "here is why you are only getting $70k in rebates rather than what you said you were owed".

That works for any product, not just sugary drinks. We had some customers who sold medical supplies for example.

Tell yourself whatever you need to sleep at night though. You seem to just be a contrarian.

Re: UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

#90

Post by selbyk »

giantg2 wrote: post #86
nejsjsjsbsb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Podiatry?

Isn't it possible you could make a mistake that maimed someone? Or that the medical billing is burdensome to some people? On the whole you might be helping people, but I would think there's a small minority that is negatively impacted too.

What benefit does gambling have?
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