- Sep 13, 2002
- 97,790
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Really interesting story:
The legalization of online gambling was a mistake and at some point the federal government should fix it.
There’s a practical aspect to this discussion: Why was it a mistake? What has happened? But also an ideological aspect: How much freedom should people have to hurt themselves? And how much freedom should people have to take advantage of others?
In short: This is the kind of conversation that I’d like to have here pretty much every day—if we lived in a world where the authoritarian crisis was over and our democracy was stable.
So for a minute, let’s pretend that we’re in that place and have the luxury to talk policy.
Because here’s the hook: Robots have taken over online gambling and they’re transferring wealth from uneducated poor people to corporations and wealthy hustlers.
This is not something society should allow.
Start with poker.
I linked to a Bloomberg story yesterday about a Russian bot operation that grew to devour the world of online poker. It’s really long and maybe you didn’t read it, so the relevant points are:
Sounds bad, right? Normal people who don’t know better show up to play poker online and discover that they can’t win because they’re getting pantsed by robots.
But the full story is actually worse.
Because as the bots began taking over, online poker sites noticed that IRL human players quickly got turned off by losing so much, so quickly. This hurt the poker sites, because remember: They make their money from the rake. They need people playing.
So these poker sites started hiring the companies that built the bots—as consultants. These consultants were then paid to optimize the behavior of the robots so that human players would be allowed to win just often enough to keep them playing.
In other words: The online poker websites paid the robots owners to slow down the rate of siphoning so that the human marks wouldn’t realize they were getting scammed.
The word you’re reaching for is “predatory.”
FULL ARTICLE: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/robot-...&isFreemail=false&r=12sbjk&triedRedirect=true
The legalization of online gambling was a mistake and at some point the federal government should fix it.
There’s a practical aspect to this discussion: Why was it a mistake? What has happened? But also an ideological aspect: How much freedom should people have to hurt themselves? And how much freedom should people have to take advantage of others?
In short: This is the kind of conversation that I’d like to have here pretty much every day—if we lived in a world where the authoritarian crisis was over and our democracy was stable.
So for a minute, let’s pretend that we’re in that place and have the luxury to talk policy.
Because here’s the hook: Robots have taken over online gambling and they’re transferring wealth from uneducated poor people to corporations and wealthy hustlers.
This is not something society should allow.
Start with poker.
I linked to a Bloomberg story yesterday about a Russian bot operation that grew to devour the world of online poker. It’s really long and maybe you didn’t read it, so the relevant points are:
- If you play online poker, there’s a good chance the “people” you’re playing against are bots.
- These bots are significantly better at poker than most of the best professionals.
- So your money gets siphoned in two directions: The bots (who are controlled by a third party) win most of your money while the online poker site takes a percentage of all the action (this is called the rake).
Sounds bad, right? Normal people who don’t know better show up to play poker online and discover that they can’t win because they’re getting pantsed by robots.
But the full story is actually worse.
Because as the bots began taking over, online poker sites noticed that IRL human players quickly got turned off by losing so much, so quickly. This hurt the poker sites, because remember: They make their money from the rake. They need people playing.
So these poker sites started hiring the companies that built the bots—as consultants. These consultants were then paid to optimize the behavior of the robots so that human players would be allowed to win just often enough to keep them playing.
In other words: The online poker websites paid the robots owners to slow down the rate of siphoning so that the human marks wouldn’t realize they were getting scammed.
The word you’re reaching for is “predatory.”
FULL ARTICLE: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/robot-...&isFreemail=false&r=12sbjk&triedRedirect=true
