I work in advertising and defend tracking, targeting, Meta, etc all the time as largely harmless. But I think one exception is when they promote products which are bad.
Tobacco ads are already banned - gambling should 100% be a banned ad category. So should mobile apps that are basically gambling in disguise.
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'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 site adverts. I'm not exaggerating, every single one of them. I think the government's sat with it's fingers crossed hoping to ride this wave and reap the rewards until it has to come out with the obligatory crackdown on this psychopathic industry it's allowing to fester and expand at an alarming rate. It's an epidemic here but it's all fun though guys isn't it? Guys? Nothing wrong with a flutter now and then!
Blairs government deregulated gambling to a large extent, hoping for some tax back from large casinos in theory at least.
Related: The website LessWrong has an epic write-up about the negative impacts of online sports gambling in the United States: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online...
> One recipient, the intelligence firm Signal, had used it to conduct sophisticated profiling that it sent back to Sky Betting & Gaming
That sounds like a different "Signal" than most people are aware of.
Once again, we see that deceptive marketing is one of the great legal evils.
Their marketing department assuredly pulled long hours carefully and intentionally crafting statements meant to cause the recipient to believe something false or at the very least different than what they actually believe, i.e. deception. They almost certainly ran focus groups verifying that their targets would, in fact, believe the untrue things they wanted them to believe that would enrich themselves.
In court they will say: "Technically, your honor, the words used could, in the most contrived and worst of all possible universes, actually mean something true; so our deliberate and intentional actions to make sure that they would be misinterpreted by our victims can not be held against us." If you carefully crafted a statement and verified its reception and interpretation, and only after it has been misinterpreted as intended then claim that "technically, your honor..." you should be guilty of false advertising or equivalent. You had plenty of opportunity to make sure that the standard interpretation of your statements would be accurate, but you intentionally chose to make it deceptive for your own enrichment.
The more time, money, and effort spent on a message, the more accurate, truthful, and only unintentionally misinterpretable to your benefit it should be. All of that effort now spent on focus grouping how to make it intentionally deceptive must instead be focused on making it intentionally truthful. This would reward true, accurate, and helpful marketing that seeks to inform at the cost of hampering false, deceptive, misleading marketing seeking to separate society from its money for garbage or actively harmful products and services.
"Technically, your honor..." should be met with "Go directly to jail".
what a world where an adult doesn't even have to take responsibility for their own actions because of whatever excuse. sad state.
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 deregulated gambling, and I hope we can one day return to that.