[ok_dad]

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.

[dang]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we've had to ask you many times not to. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

(p.s. Just to pre-empt the usual: no, this is not a defense of Big Gambling, just an attempted defense of HN thread quality.)

[p1necone]

Usually I agree with your calls on things being unsubstantive, but this one kinda seems fine? I don't think it's flame bait, just emotive language? And the substantive point being made is that online gambling should be illegal.

(apologies if arguing about mod decisions is frowned upon, I didn't see anything in the rules about it)

[dang]

If it were just the one comment I wouldn't have said anything; the issue is the pattern (note the word "repeatedly").

[p1necone]

Fair, the comment history does paint a different picture.

[Drupon]

This comment was unnecessary and very distracting from a far more interesting discussion in the replies to the commenter you are attempting to condescend.

[root_axis]

There is no censorship happening here - the comment remains visible, he simply asked them to refrain from the inflammatory language.

[burnished]

dang is the moderator

[ipython]

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.

[lokar]

The court ruling was a good one, and anticipated. The federal government can either allow all gambling, or ban it all. They can’t pick and choose states where it may be allowed.

[morkalork]

Exactly. The corruption and rot is beyond the pale.

[irishcoffee]

Probation was a thing, too. How did that turn out?

[nemomarx]

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?

[jmcgough]

fanduel and draftkings poured massive amount of money into advertising, pumping their numbers to make it seem like gambling was too big to stop.

[lotsofpulp]

There was mass lobbying, specificially by the taxpayers of the state of New Jersey, via their elected representatives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...

Note that it was not a close decision:

> Opinion of the Court

>The Court announced a 7–2 judgment in favor of Murphy on May 14, 2018, reversing the Third Circuit.[25] Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch and in part by Justice Stephen Breyer.[26][27][28] The majority opinion agreed that §§ 3701(1) of PASPA commandeered power from the states to regulate their own gambling industries and thus was unconstitutional. It followed New York v. United States and reversed the Third Circuit decision.

[DonHopkins]

You'll have to ask your probation officer.

[geoduck14]

Prohibition was incredibly successful at reducing the amount of alcohol people drank

[_carbyau_]

And increasing tunneling skills! And increasing car racing! (Though I still don't get oval racing.)

Prohibition had some unintended consequences.

[ok_dad]

You can’t download drugs and alcohol digitally.

Frankly, being able to buy drugs and alcohol online is probably a mistake, too.

[JumpCrisscross]

> You can’t download drugs and alcohol digitally

It was almost certainly easier for most people to buy drugs than gamble illegally when both were illegal.

[jmcgough]

Most states had lotteries before this though. At least those brought in tax money and were designed to be relatively fair. Online gambling can shut down your account and refuse to pay if you get too big of a payout, and their money isn't going towards public schools.