There are a number of things that cycle because the solution ends up being successful enough that the next generation doesn't realize there is a problem being solved. Chesterton's Fence, except on a generational timescale it's Chesterton's Oscillating Fence.
100% squashing gambling has generally not been successful, but the strategy of fencing it away from most of society and keeping it in a set of defined places that require people to actively seek it out has been successful enough that people forget why we don't allow gambling in every convenience store in the country. I'd say the additional "convenience" of having it in your pocket all the time is a new nuance, but doesn't necessarily change the fundamental equations.
We will relearn. Our grandchildren will forget again. (Unless things have really changed.)
Ditto, this is a cancer. Wayne Gretzky is dead to me because of his support of these ads. The greatest Canadian athlete of the 80s and 90s is now Bret "The Hitman" Hart.
On a more depressing note, wasn't this always a thing? I remember being in 4th grade when a classmate brought in something called "Mise-o-jou", which was being run by the Quebec government.
I am from Montreal and (I can't believe this but it is 100% true) I was bullied in my (English-speaking) Montreal-area grade school for wearing non-Oilers merch. I was pleased when he left. (Yes, this is the home of Rocket Richard, the Pocket Rocket, Jean Beliveau, Guy Lafleur and Patrick Roy at the time)
I think the online element hates Gretzky because of something about the order of Canada but that does nothing to me and I honestly don't care. However, the gambling ads literally damage the fabric of the country and ruin the lives of average people, for a guy who made more in an year than many people made in a lifetime.
When it comes to hard drugs I can understand why there are reasonable arguments for legalization of personal use.
Idk how many reasonable arguments extend the overton window to thinking that meth should be advertised seemingly all over the place. Because gambling ads are actually everywhere.
No. They are called "vices" because you get stuck in them. Ten thousand studies on mice tell us that addiction isn't learned morality but innate biology.
We also pass laws regulating murder/arson/theft even though those too can be avoided through self control.
Modern sports gambling ads amount to fraud because winners are prevented from winning more through wager restrictions. The whole industry can only exist because it cheats and lies.
I was going to upvote this comment but changed my mind because I think although we both see gambling ads as a scourge, we could not be more far apart in our reasons.
I could give two shits about the "public health crisis". People have agency, they can choose what to do with their lives and their money and I'm okay with the reaping and sowing lining up together.
I'm concerned in that I find the focus on gambling presented so prominently to be offensive, period. That is, I am offended. This is Just Wrong. I enjoy watching (some) sports, I appreciate the drama, I love the moments of superhuman feats and the balance of luck and skill and strategy and tactics and grand strategy and analysis and all of the things that it presents.
A friendly wager is fine, going by a sports book is fine once in a while. Even betting on an outcome on an online sports book is fine. It is a vice, sure, but who among us does not enjoy stepping outside the bounds of "proper" behavior. But this pervasive push to treat it as a normal and expected and typical thing offends me. It is a vice, and it should be done with the appropriate amount of shame and friction that we tolerate of almost all vices. It should not be normalized and it should not be glorified.
>Every AI model has the same “controversial” take on humans
You have far less agency than you think you do. We are automatons in so much of our behavior. You do what your parents tell you, your parents do what the church tells them, and you all buy ice cold Coca-Cola because the TV tells you to. In bulk we are statistically predictable. This is why we have laws against particular drugs, huge numbers of us will high ourselves to death and collapse the society around us. Society itself is a remover of agency. Animals can do whatever they want, humans are constrained socially in what we're allowed to do.
I guess it's possible, but you have no idea how much agency I think I have.
To focus on one example you give, "Society itself is a removed of agency. Animals can do whatever they want, humans are constrained socially in what we're allowed to do." -- this is a clear misunderstanding of what agency is, or at least how I am using it. You CAN do anything you are physically capable of doing, even in violation of society's rules. Complete agency! People desire things that are only obtainable through conformance with society's rules, or, more sociopathically, only obtainable through the appearance of conformance with society's rules. That society survives is in effect dependent on this fragile web of incentives and expectations and social consequences and martial consequences
You can choose not to drink Coke! That people statistically choose to drink Coke does not mean that people lack agency. If you think the reason people drink Coke is because TV tells you to, then I encourage you to create your own beverage and advertise the shit out it and then get super rich!
The problem is that there is a feeling that you have written out here: that manipulation of people's desires is somehow mechanistic or predictable.
That you can follow some script and get people to do something. But it only appears that way because you are looking at the survivors of the vicious evolution, red in tooth and branding. All the ads in the world didn't make Crystal Pepsi a winner (or frankly make Pepsi a winner). The combination of factors that makes one thing successful and another not cannot be easily replicated or copied from one domain to another or even within one domain.
If there were a mechanism then someone would be using it; everyone would be using it; and there would be no winners and everyone would be a winner. It's a self-contradictory view that doesn't match reality in any way.
The Canadian provincial governments usually have a monopoly in running gambling services, and there is a strong case to be made that this is as much about ensuring that they keep making revenue from gambling as it is to reduce the ill effects of other gambling ads.
Its pretty remarkable what happened as soon as the regulation was loosened. In Alberta it feels as though these companies bought every single ad spot available. I can’t walk, drive, browse in any direction without seeing a gambling ad somewhere. Its not uncommon for me to see them in two or three places simultaneously. A real boring dystopia.
Likewise in Ontario, almost every ad I see on streaming services is for online gambling sites. We're new parents, and I'm surprised the baby gear companies rolling in money that are surely targeting us can't outspend these sites.
no one is banning gambling (impossible with the internet which is why they legalized it..) just advertising on.. tv I guess. because you cant stop advertising on the internet..
They had a ban in place for years and it worked. They have a ban for non kyc cryto markets. It is easy to lean on payment processors and stop 90% of it.
Yeah you just say that customers lost their money illegally, make the companies give the lost money back and watch them implement know-your-customer real quick, all on their own.
Yeah, they had no problem banning online poker that way. Annoying these garbage sports betting sites are allowed now but you still can't play online poker outside of a few states.
i saw a commercial of a presumably 18 year old ignoring their family at dinner and gambling under the table on their phone and the line went something like "they dont need to know how much fun youre having!". this was during a baseball game im watching with kids. its totally fukt
I'm fine with gambling existing, but we dont need to manipulate people into doing addictive self-destructive vices they wouldn't already do.
Also the ads are super annoying.
100% squashing gambling has generally not been successful, but the strategy of fencing it away from most of society and keeping it in a set of defined places that require people to actively seek it out has been successful enough that people forget why we don't allow gambling in every convenience store in the country. I'd say the additional "convenience" of having it in your pocket all the time is a new nuance, but doesn't necessarily change the fundamental equations.
We will relearn. Our grandchildren will forget again. (Unless things have really changed.)
On a more depressing note, wasn't this always a thing? I remember being in 4th grade when a classmate brought in something called "Mise-o-jou", which was being run by the Quebec government.
I think the online element hates Gretzky because of something about the order of Canada but that does nothing to me and I honestly don't care. However, the gambling ads literally damage the fabric of the country and ruin the lives of average people, for a guy who made more in an year than many people made in a lifetime.
When it comes to hard drugs I can understand why there are reasonable arguments for legalization of personal use.
Idk how many reasonable arguments extend the overton window to thinking that meth should be advertised seemingly all over the place. Because gambling ads are actually everywhere.
We also pass laws regulating murder/arson/theft even though those too can be avoided through self control.
I could give two shits about the "public health crisis". People have agency, they can choose what to do with their lives and their money and I'm okay with the reaping and sowing lining up together.
I'm concerned in that I find the focus on gambling presented so prominently to be offensive, period. That is, I am offended. This is Just Wrong. I enjoy watching (some) sports, I appreciate the drama, I love the moments of superhuman feats and the balance of luck and skill and strategy and tactics and grand strategy and analysis and all of the things that it presents.
A friendly wager is fine, going by a sports book is fine once in a while. Even betting on an outcome on an online sports book is fine. It is a vice, sure, but who among us does not enjoy stepping outside the bounds of "proper" behavior. But this pervasive push to treat it as a normal and expected and typical thing offends me. It is a vice, and it should be done with the appropriate amount of shame and friction that we tolerate of almost all vices. It should not be normalized and it should not be glorified.
Heh, I wonder how this fits in with how AI thinks about it.
>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50197313
>Every AI model has the same “controversial” take on humans
You have far less agency than you think you do. We are automatons in so much of our behavior. You do what your parents tell you, your parents do what the church tells them, and you all buy ice cold Coca-Cola because the TV tells you to. In bulk we are statistically predictable. This is why we have laws against particular drugs, huge numbers of us will high ourselves to death and collapse the society around us. Society itself is a remover of agency. Animals can do whatever they want, humans are constrained socially in what we're allowed to do.
We really do have a false idea of who we are.
I guess it's possible, but you have no idea how much agency I think I have.
To focus on one example you give, "Society itself is a removed of agency. Animals can do whatever they want, humans are constrained socially in what we're allowed to do." -- this is a clear misunderstanding of what agency is, or at least how I am using it. You CAN do anything you are physically capable of doing, even in violation of society's rules. Complete agency! People desire things that are only obtainable through conformance with society's rules, or, more sociopathically, only obtainable through the appearance of conformance with society's rules. That society survives is in effect dependent on this fragile web of incentives and expectations and social consequences and martial consequences
You can choose not to drink Coke! That people statistically choose to drink Coke does not mean that people lack agency. If you think the reason people drink Coke is because TV tells you to, then I encourage you to create your own beverage and advertise the shit out it and then get super rich!
The problem is that there is a feeling that you have written out here: that manipulation of people's desires is somehow mechanistic or predictable.
That you can follow some script and get people to do something. But it only appears that way because you are looking at the survivors of the vicious evolution, red in tooth and branding. All the ads in the world didn't make Crystal Pepsi a winner (or frankly make Pepsi a winner). The combination of factors that makes one thing successful and another not cannot be easily replicated or copied from one domain to another or even within one domain.
If there were a mechanism then someone would be using it; everyone would be using it; and there would be no winners and everyone would be a winner. It's a self-contradictory view that doesn't match reality in any way.
The Canadian provincial governments usually have a monopoly in running gambling services, and there is a strong case to be made that this is as much about ensuring that they keep making revenue from gambling as it is to reduce the ill effects of other gambling ads.
ex: https://www.canadiangamingbusiness.com/2026/10/22/new-brunsw...
it seems unlikely they'd ban something so soon after legalizing.