[throwaway173738]

The sports betting sites even have account managers who are tasked with keeping people on the sites even after the user has decided to quit. It’s so lucrative they can afford to pay people to sit and text gambling addicts.

[capncleaver]

This is common practice in gambling and now games, too: Zynga has 'VIP' teams for high-spending free to play game customers, they would talk on the phone at length, get to know them, fly them to Vegas for jaunts, etc. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-does-zynga-hunt-for-whales...

> "We've done so much experimenting at Zynga with VIP. We know what's the frequency of contact. We know what call types work. We know what times to call. We know exactly who to call and when. We know who has a higher propensity to be more susceptible to our call."

[autoexec]

Video games are massively under-regulated to the point where we've basically got online casinos specifically targeting children. It's so gross.