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cogman10 52 minutes ago [-]
All these gambling apps need regulation. And I fear they are buying politicians precisely so that doesn't happen.
If I were to have my way, I'd put a law in place that limits bets to $5 max and monthly bets to $150 per month. Letting them go higher encourages some of the worst aspects of society.
We will see crazy things like athletes being injured or murdered in order to win bets. We are already seeing crazy things like white house insiders placing bets on when wars will start.
One of the few ways to really solve this problem is reducing the possible amount of award so the individuals placing these bets don't feel like they have to take matters into their own hands to win.
ok_dad 38 minutes ago [-]
We should just make gambling illegal online again, things were fine back when you couldn’t gamble online then, at least in the USA, the fucking supreme corpo guzzlers (formerly the Supreme Court) interpreted the laws according to their owners will and now we have gambling online.
ipython 28 minutes ago [-]
Exactly. Gambling in the real world involved friction. That plus a certain social stigma if you gambled outside of “mainstream” casinos.
And this helped weed out all but the most addicted gamblers. Now there is no friction, the platforms are free to create dark patterns to encourage problem gambling, and the vice has zero social cost.
irishcoffee 28 minutes ago [-]
Probation was a thing, too. How did that turn out?
nemomarx 2 minutes ago [-]
There wasn't some mass movement of people doing online gambling that led to the dam bursting and it getting legalized, though. Courts just made a different decision and opened it up one day and as far as I know there wasn't even mass lobbying about it?
ok_dad 17 minutes ago [-]
You can’t download drugs and alcohol digitally.
Frankly, being able to buy drugs and alcohol online is probably a mistake, too.
j16sdiz 20 minutes ago [-]
Most of their practice are illegal already. The problem is lack of enforcement.
We are not suing polymarket.
We are not suing the marketing company.
And we don't want online censorship.
IMO, the marketing company / media company should be sued. -- They are (relatively) easier target to sue. Many are US based and not going anywhere. With enough luck, this might give us a better internet with less SEO bullshit.
EA-3167 38 minutes ago [-]
Just another hearty dividend thanks to corporate personhood and Citizen's United. Rarely has a single decision so thoroughly broken our system, but the regulatory capture is plain to see these days.
cj 1 hours ago [-]
I finally gave in to my curiosity and downloaded Kalshi last week to place a few bets on the World Cup.
I was blown away how easy it was. I placed a bet with real money within 5 minutes of downloading the app.
They allow instant deposits with credit card, and ID verification was real time.
I can’t imagine that the extreme accessibility and the typical dark patterns deployed by every popular app won’t eventually end badly.
(I was also shocked that when looking at my credit card bill online, next to the Kalshi deposit line item it showed a promo “would you like to split this payment over 12 month?” and seemingly was only available for that one transaction. So I could have deposited $1000 via CC into Kalshi and paid it back $83/mo over 12 months.)
This industry is wild.
holistio 52 minutes ago [-]
Back in the good old days you needed a few more steps before you got into debt after gambling.
owlninja 34 minutes ago [-]
I read a book this year about sports gambling in the US [1], and it points out how nasty and predatory it is. I think "prediction markets" have even less regulation? I would talk to my sports fan buddies at work and they would say "oh, just how sportsbooks in Vegas operate already", but this is on-demand, in your face, constantly nudging you to bet with dark patterns and "comps". I used to want sports gambling legal in the US, but the way it has gone is incredibly disgusting and is starting to make watching sports almost annoying. The crawl on the bottom is no longer scores, but moneylines...
[1] "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling" (2026) by Danny Funt
parm26 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
znyboy 54 minutes ago [-]
I think you missed the point entirely.
All of these "prediction market" gambling platforms are actively predatory to their users, with very little (if any) regulatory oversight.
dylan604 57 minutes ago [-]
Based on the ad they are running during World Cup of the guy in the dentist office, they just don't care how/where money is spent as they just print money.
Yes, it is 100% a misrepresentation of reality to fool the general public into joining a platform that condones deceptive user acquisition strategies.
jordanb 59 minutes ago [-]
I was listening to a podcast and heard an ad for supplements (I think it was collegian). The thing that struck me was the specificity of the health claims they were making in the ad.
There was no "promotes healthy whatever" it was like "this will make your skin younger and eliminate/prevent wrinkles and other signs of aging."
Then the quiet fast-talking guy said that none of their health claims have been reviewed by the FDA.
So that's where we are now. Everything is scams and nobody will do anything about it.
pesus 54 minutes ago [-]
I agree with your point in general, but doesn't that disclaimer apply to any kind of supplement? As far as I know that sort of thing has been allowed for quite some time. For whatever reason the FDA allows for an almost completely unregulated vitamin/supplement industry.
jordanb 40 minutes ago [-]
They used to be vague and not make specific claims because that wasn't allowed. They'd say "Vitamin K helps promote healthy eyes." They can't say "our chewable will cure your glaucoma. (claimhasnotbeenreviewedbytheFDA)"
But apparently they can do that now, or at least they are doing it.
qlte 35 minutes ago [-]
It's not up to the FDA, their hands are tied thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah on behalf of the supplement lobby.
I don't see an end to any of it when the Grifter-in-chief is in office.
ok_dad 32 minutes ago [-]
Unfortunately American culture is cursed, you can’t expect it to fix itself after trump leaves. Trump it’s ultimately a product of America’s culture over the past decades. He’s not the one who caused it, but he’s another symptom of it.
I don’t really want to explain why I think American culture has been cursed for ages, but this isn’t the place, my point here is that Trump is a criminal grifter and sexual assaulter and more, and that’s because American culture loves that sort of thing now and the road from high trust to low trust started 50 or more years ago, not just when trump became an issue. He’s horrible and needs dealt with but so does American culture in general to prevent more trumps.
recursive 22 minutes ago [-]
I mean maybe Trump also caused it but there's no way he's just an innocent bystander here.
ok_dad 19 minutes ago [-]
Yes I already said that he’s bad, don’t roast me, I’m trying to use nuance here like we’re supposed to.
idle_zealot 1 hours ago [-]
Would it matter if the bets were real and they picked the 0.00001% big winners to feature in the ad? Would that be less fraudulent in any meaningful sense, would it have a different impact on the world?
Is the real crime here that they were too lazy to lie with selective facts?
ceejayoz 1 hours ago [-]
> Would that be less fraudulent…
Is this even a question? Yes, it would be less fraudulent.
idle_zealot 56 minutes ago [-]
I question your definitions. In what sense is it legally or morally useful to discriminate between lying with statistics and lying without them? It's an academically useful distinction, but why does it matter in practice? People are misled, the misleading is intentional, but if you hire a statistician to do it for you instead of an actor then you're A-Okay?
Would a prosecution have high chance of succeeding?
jcgrillo 54 minutes ago [-]
Isn't everything these days? It's all gotten so gross.
matheusmoreira 3 minutes ago [-]
Yeah. It's so demoralizing, seeing all these people make fortunes while honest people scrape by. It feels like getting in on the grift is the only way to make it.
charcircuit 26 minutes ago [-]
Every ad is staged like this. The whole point is to make as good of an ad for the product as possible.
Do you think in a food commercial the people eating the product are showing their genuine emotion? It's all acting.
Zambyte 5 minutes ago [-]
This is like a food commercial where someone shows an extreme reaction to food that isn't the product they're selling, or acting like they're eating something that isn't food at all. There are laws regarding food advertising that require it to present the real food (though the presentation of it is usually way better).
Mobius01 32 minutes ago [-]
I remember in 2006 when online sports gambling was banned, and witnessed first hand some sleaze bags flee to Costa Rica where many of the actual operations were located. What I witnessed regarding addiction and exploitation put me off sports for a long time. Now here we are, with the tech industry and political capital behind it, this time engineered to engulf the entire population. It's repulsive.
polnurfer 39 minutes ago [-]
Just like all the bots on this site, when you control the platform, you control the platform.
PearlRiver 29 minutes ago [-]
An American company being corrupt, morally bankrupt and shady? It is practically a requirement these days.
peyton 16 minutes ago [-]
Never thought I’d live to see the 五毛 come to Hacker News.
mh- 14 minutes ago [-]
It's extremely disappointing to see where discourse has slipped to here. Have started looking for a "new HN" to have actual discussions on again.
If I were to have my way, I'd put a law in place that limits bets to $5 max and monthly bets to $150 per month. Letting them go higher encourages some of the worst aspects of society.
We will see crazy things like athletes being injured or murdered in order to win bets. We are already seeing crazy things like white house insiders placing bets on when wars will start.
One of the few ways to really solve this problem is reducing the possible amount of award so the individuals placing these bets don't feel like they have to take matters into their own hands to win.
And this helped weed out all but the most addicted gamblers. Now there is no friction, the platforms are free to create dark patterns to encourage problem gambling, and the vice has zero social cost.
Frankly, being able to buy drugs and alcohol online is probably a mistake, too.
We are not suing polymarket. We are not suing the marketing company. And we don't want online censorship.
IMO, the marketing company / media company should be sued. -- They are (relatively) easier target to sue. Many are US based and not going anywhere. With enough luck, this might give us a better internet with less SEO bullshit.
I was blown away how easy it was. I placed a bet with real money within 5 minutes of downloading the app.
They allow instant deposits with credit card, and ID verification was real time.
I can’t imagine that the extreme accessibility and the typical dark patterns deployed by every popular app won’t eventually end badly.
(I was also shocked that when looking at my credit card bill online, next to the Kalshi deposit line item it showed a promo “would you like to split this payment over 12 month?” and seemingly was only available for that one transaction. So I could have deposited $1000 via CC into Kalshi and paid it back $83/mo over 12 months.)
This industry is wild.
[1] "Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling" (2026) by Danny Funt
There was no "promotes healthy whatever" it was like "this will make your skin younger and eliminate/prevent wrinkles and other signs of aging."
Then the quiet fast-talking guy said that none of their health claims have been reviewed by the FDA.
So that's where we are now. Everything is scams and nobody will do anything about it.
But apparently they can do that now, or at least they are doing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_...
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/12/31/6738513...
I don’t really want to explain why I think American culture has been cursed for ages, but this isn’t the place, my point here is that Trump is a criminal grifter and sexual assaulter and more, and that’s because American culture loves that sort of thing now and the road from high trust to low trust started 50 or more years ago, not just when trump became an issue. He’s horrible and needs dealt with but so does American culture in general to prevent more trumps.
Is the real crime here that they were too lazy to lie with selective facts?
Is this even a question? Yes, it would be less fraudulent.
"Celebrity X won" was not.
I am not a fan of gambling, nor gambling advertisements, but this was outright fraud, and a violation of FTC rules (https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorse...) on disclosure.
Do you think in a food commercial the people eating the product are showing their genuine emotion? It's all acting.