This is a little different from the usual post, but hopefully folks enjoy it. Let me know if you'd be interested in more pieces written in this style, and what you think the strongest arguments on each side of the debate are.
Loved it. Thoughtful and thought-provoking. I like the interplay not only between viewpoints but also between interlocutors who hold substantially overlapping yet meaningfully different world views, and between elements of their attendant thinking/feeling styles.
I love this format. This is sort of downstream and speculative on my part, but it seems like it’s great for you to model for your readers what it means to be charitable and steel man arguments on all sides. This is sorely lacking in today’s day and age imho (it feels worse to me than times past in that regard, but idk if that’s actually true).
You briefly nodded to an advertising ban, but I think at least politically that's an easier sell, given the parallels to tobacco and the fact that we are all sick of seeing those ads.
Might also ban specific manipulative products like "free bet" promotions.
That way you don't get into whether an iPad is a smartphone but a Microsoft Surface isn't it whatever that makes such a ban feel petty.
As someone generally more against a ban than for it, I do think an advertising ban would be a good starting point. Would also give a comparison point to see if some of these trends are persistent or short-term harms caused by sites getting legalized and then blasting new markets with ads and first-bet promos to get lots of new people in. But, also, I am biased in that I'd like to watch a game without 500 gambling ads and the commentators awkwardly trying to shoehorn in a sponsored mid-game parlay.
Agreed. I’m sympathetic to the argument that a pure smartphone ban would be unfair to people in rural areas, as well as younger or poorer people who might be less likely to have other internet access. But an advertising ban affects everyone equally.
I suspect you’re onto something there. I might even take it a step further; I’m sympathetic to the idea of banning surveillance advertising, period (not convinced one way or another; just sympathetic). Idk for sure if the kind of advertising these apps are doing counts as surveillance advertising, but I suspect so. They’re probably using the big tech companies’ infrastructure to serve those ads and collect data, which I would think would put them in that bucket.
There already are regulations for keeping problem day trading under control. In the United States, brokerages must identify day traders and apply special restrictions to their accounts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader
There's a lot of extra details but the gist of it is that if you enter and exit a position in the same day four or more times in a rolling five business day window, your account will be restricted from making any more day trades until 90 days pass or you have at least $25,000 in your account.
I think gambling apps should be made to adopt similar rules.
For what it's worth, why not start with "Truth in Gambling" laws: before every bet you place the sportsbook has to publicize how much money people lost in the last week, how much the average user lost and what percentage of bettors lost their bets.
I don’t have a strong option on actual sports gambling other than I’d like to see advertising and communication about it banned in a way that is not possible due to the first amendment.
The actual games/sports seems to have taken a backseat to sports gambling in coverage on ESPN and as the lowest common denominator of male bonding and conversation, and I find this incredibly annoying.
Since an advertising ban is not workable, I think the best thing would be to restrict it to kiosks or places where you would find lottery tickets such as convenience stores, gas stations, bars, etc.
I say this as someone who has enjoys occasional gambling as a hobby. I’ve bet $30,000 and lost a net of $800 in the 3.5 years since sports gambling has been legal in my state. I bet a ton when it first became legal but now I’ll occasionally put $20 to $50 on a game, and I don’t have any expectation of making money over the long run.
Why do you think advertising bans aren't possible due to the first amendment? America already bans advertising cigarettes and that hasn't ever been found unconstitutional.
I was thinking of it in the context of prescription drug advertising, where the pharmaceutical companies have had some success in court when they challenge restrictions.
Cigarette advertising is probably a better example.
Either way, I think it would be good for congress to ban it and see if the sportsbooks have the appetite to challenge advertising that is annoying and universally hated.
I think the correct approach here is to adopt the libertarian pro-gambling rhetoric and say people have a right to place bets and casinos / apps can’t ban Nate Silver and other winners from entering their information marketplace. If that bankrupts some casinos… ok.
I agree with this and I’ll add that Nate himself mentioned in his book or on the podcast that he went all in on NBA gambling as part of the research for his book and came out ahead by so little as to have earned under minimum wage given the estimated 2 hours a day or so of research and betting that he did during the season.
For me it really reinforced that you need to be an extreme outlier and incredibly determined and connected to make a living off it.
Following up on, “where is the line? What about trading apps and meme coins?” I feel like there is an answer here.
Ban smartphone trading contracts that will resolve to zero for one party within 48 hours. This covers most horrible options trading and nukes the worst of Draft Kings’s offerings.
You can still put in your 17 leg parlays, but you can’t chase something else on game day, once Anthony Davis tweaks his hamstring in the first quarter and blows it up.
You can still buy GME and DOGECoin, but you better actually have diamond hands because, no 0DE options to get your dopamine fix.
Maybe it’s my French-Canadian socialist bias speaking, but why not ban private sports betting in general and give the market (mobile/digital) to a state-owned corp. All profits go back into society and the state-owned corp can reinvest in prevention. That’s how vice (like weed, alcohol, gambling) is handled in most Canadian provinces.
The causal gambler will have his fun with the state-owned app, the state will have better control over problematic gamblers (at least it will have access to the data) to minimize the harm and the pro gambler that want test his skills but need access to all the betting options is probably savvy enough to know how to access the “illegal” apps.
I've definitely come to the idea that the apps (it's always the phones) is the problem. We need to have the resistance of making people go to a casino to make a bet. Being able to immediately bet and face targeted ads pushing to bet more is a recipe for disaster
A neat format for a discussion! But I feel like neither side addressed the practicalities of banning something "on smartphones". The web works fine on a phone, which is why you can have Apple disallowing porn apps on the App Store but mobile accounting for 90% of traffic to Pornhub: https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2024-year-in-review#devices-tech
Imo, banning advertising, particularly during a game, as well as the most predatory behaviours like time-limited special odds offers (actually just ban all push notifications) goes the furthest towards addressing the most problematic cases. You argue for friction in the form of physically attending a bookmaker, but equally you can keep the convenience of using your phone but prevent it from becoming an infinite poker machine by restricting the kinds of bets people can place.
Maybe this is a bit more extensible to gambling-like activities like day trading or crypto? Perhaps a good rule of thumb would be that the outcome of a bet/trade must be at minimum some time period (1 hour?) in the future, to _specifically_ address the psychological mechanism by which addictive behaviours are formed. You'd need to figure out what that cutoff is, but to me that feels like a better place to draw the line than the particular device a person is using.
I like it, SSC style! I wish there was an option for neutral in the poll, I probably would've picked that. But at the end of the day I think Jack's argument speaks more towards my classical liberal values. I agree we should make betting harder to do, there should 100% be a license verification to determine age at the least.
This is a little different from the usual post, but hopefully folks enjoy it. Let me know if you'd be interested in more pieces written in this style, and what you think the strongest arguments on each side of the debate are.
Loved it. Thoughtful and thought-provoking. I like the interplay not only between viewpoints but also between interlocutors who hold substantially overlapping yet meaningfully different world views, and between elements of their attendant thinking/feeling styles.
I love this format. This is sort of downstream and speculative on my part, but it seems like it’s great for you to model for your readers what it means to be charitable and steel man arguments on all sides. This is sorely lacking in today’s day and age imho (it feels worse to me than times past in that regard, but idk if that’s actually true).
You briefly nodded to an advertising ban, but I think at least politically that's an easier sell, given the parallels to tobacco and the fact that we are all sick of seeing those ads.
Might also ban specific manipulative products like "free bet" promotions.
That way you don't get into whether an iPad is a smartphone but a Microsoft Surface isn't it whatever that makes such a ban feel petty.
As someone generally more against a ban than for it, I do think an advertising ban would be a good starting point. Would also give a comparison point to see if some of these trends are persistent or short-term harms caused by sites getting legalized and then blasting new markets with ads and first-bet promos to get lots of new people in. But, also, I am biased in that I'd like to watch a game without 500 gambling ads and the commentators awkwardly trying to shoehorn in a sponsored mid-game parlay.
Agreed. I’m sympathetic to the argument that a pure smartphone ban would be unfair to people in rural areas, as well as younger or poorer people who might be less likely to have other internet access. But an advertising ban affects everyone equally.
I suspect you’re onto something there. I might even take it a step further; I’m sympathetic to the idea of banning surveillance advertising, period (not convinced one way or another; just sympathetic). Idk for sure if the kind of advertising these apps are doing counts as surveillance advertising, but I suspect so. They’re probably using the big tech companies’ infrastructure to serve those ads and collect data, which I would think would put them in that bucket.
There already are regulations for keeping problem day trading under control. In the United States, brokerages must identify day traders and apply special restrictions to their accounts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader
There's a lot of extra details but the gist of it is that if you enter and exit a position in the same day four or more times in a rolling five business day window, your account will be restricted from making any more day trades until 90 days pass or you have at least $25,000 in your account.
I think gambling apps should be made to adopt similar rules.
For what it's worth, why not start with "Truth in Gambling" laws: before every bet you place the sportsbook has to publicize how much money people lost in the last week, how much the average user lost and what percentage of bettors lost their bets.
I don’t have a strong option on actual sports gambling other than I’d like to see advertising and communication about it banned in a way that is not possible due to the first amendment.
The actual games/sports seems to have taken a backseat to sports gambling in coverage on ESPN and as the lowest common denominator of male bonding and conversation, and I find this incredibly annoying.
Since an advertising ban is not workable, I think the best thing would be to restrict it to kiosks or places where you would find lottery tickets such as convenience stores, gas stations, bars, etc.
I say this as someone who has enjoys occasional gambling as a hobby. I’ve bet $30,000 and lost a net of $800 in the 3.5 years since sports gambling has been legal in my state. I bet a ton when it first became legal but now I’ll occasionally put $20 to $50 on a game, and I don’t have any expectation of making money over the long run.
Why do you think advertising bans aren't possible due to the first amendment? America already bans advertising cigarettes and that hasn't ever been found unconstitutional.
I was thinking of it in the context of prescription drug advertising, where the pharmaceutical companies have had some success in court when they challenge restrictions.
Cigarette advertising is probably a better example.
Either way, I think it would be good for congress to ban it and see if the sportsbooks have the appetite to challenge advertising that is annoying and universally hated.
I think the correct approach here is to adopt the libertarian pro-gambling rhetoric and say people have a right to place bets and casinos / apps can’t ban Nate Silver and other winners from entering their information marketplace. If that bankrupts some casinos… ok.
I agree with this and I’ll add that Nate himself mentioned in his book or on the podcast that he went all in on NBA gambling as part of the research for his book and came out ahead by so little as to have earned under minimum wage given the estimated 2 hours a day or so of research and betting that he did during the season.
For me it really reinforced that you need to be an extreme outlier and incredibly determined and connected to make a living off it.
Following up on, “where is the line? What about trading apps and meme coins?” I feel like there is an answer here.
Ban smartphone trading contracts that will resolve to zero for one party within 48 hours. This covers most horrible options trading and nukes the worst of Draft Kings’s offerings.
You can still put in your 17 leg parlays, but you can’t chase something else on game day, once Anthony Davis tweaks his hamstring in the first quarter and blows it up.
You can still buy GME and DOGECoin, but you better actually have diamond hands because, no 0DE options to get your dopamine fix.
Start there and see what that gets us.
Maybe it’s my French-Canadian socialist bias speaking, but why not ban private sports betting in general and give the market (mobile/digital) to a state-owned corp. All profits go back into society and the state-owned corp can reinvest in prevention. That’s how vice (like weed, alcohol, gambling) is handled in most Canadian provinces.
The causal gambler will have his fun with the state-owned app, the state will have better control over problematic gamblers (at least it will have access to the data) to minimize the harm and the pro gambler that want test his skills but need access to all the betting options is probably savvy enough to know how to access the “illegal” apps.
That’s the closest to a win-win-win you can get.
I've definitely come to the idea that the apps (it's always the phones) is the problem. We need to have the resistance of making people go to a casino to make a bet. Being able to immediately bet and face targeted ads pushing to bet more is a recipe for disaster
A neat format for a discussion! But I feel like neither side addressed the practicalities of banning something "on smartphones". The web works fine on a phone, which is why you can have Apple disallowing porn apps on the App Store but mobile accounting for 90% of traffic to Pornhub: https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2024-year-in-review#devices-tech
Imo, banning advertising, particularly during a game, as well as the most predatory behaviours like time-limited special odds offers (actually just ban all push notifications) goes the furthest towards addressing the most problematic cases. You argue for friction in the form of physically attending a bookmaker, but equally you can keep the convenience of using your phone but prevent it from becoming an infinite poker machine by restricting the kinds of bets people can place.
Maybe this is a bit more extensible to gambling-like activities like day trading or crypto? Perhaps a good rule of thumb would be that the outcome of a bet/trade must be at minimum some time period (1 hour?) in the future, to _specifically_ address the psychological mechanism by which addictive behaviours are formed. You'd need to figure out what that cutoff is, but to me that feels like a better place to draw the line than the particular device a person is using.
I like it, SSC style! I wish there was an option for neutral in the poll, I probably would've picked that. But at the end of the day I think Jack's argument speaks more towards my classical liberal values. I agree we should make betting harder to do, there should 100% be a license verification to determine age at the least.