One last point on this. Many replies like "well its what the customers want, who are you to say it's bad?". Please understand that the modern web technology industry is exceedingly skilled at, and hyper focused on, changing customer behavior to make it more profitable https://twitter.com/bennpeifert/status/1281262695656730626

Like, this is Silicon Valley! We buy millions of clicks from Google and Facebook ads and run thousands of A/B tests constantly on every aspect of the UI and the messaging to figure out how to move behavior metrics that in turn move profitability metrics

Gambling is a real thing, often a severe addiction that can ruin lives. I didn't say we should ban it (in any of the forms that it manifests itself). But I'm pointing out that tech companies in the space face a real incentives problem that is hard to overcome.

The narrative is about disruption and democratization. But the reality is, the user is the product, and the companies that are most effective in pushing their users into self destructive behavior generate the most revenue from their users.

Its not disruption, its just the Fugazi, same game as has always been played in the Wall Street boiler rooms, just on the internet