Gambling and betting always seem target explotation of people who aren't well off already. Like lottery tickets I worry that Polymarket, Kalshi and the like are ways to further destroy the marginal in an apathetic if not malign political environment. It doesn't seem like anyone is doing anything about it.

>My Instagram ads

That's your one-two punch right there. On Instagram, and viewing ads. Best thing to do is avoid both.

Meanwhile these degenerate folk play these things irresponsibly, become public charges, and I have to pay the brunt of it as a taxpayer who isn't going to get any of my money back in the form of things that benefit me. Social Security will be insolvent, I still don't have universal healthcare or functional public transportation, and the cost of everything is going up while I'm getting taxed to death.

The only actual solution I've found is to participate in the "system" itself and actually get my money back from the "system". I have better math skills than 99.9% of people on the platforms, so I'm able to profit significantly by quant trading on it.

I wish I didn't have to do this. I'd love to be rich just by working and getting to actually keep the money I make from working. Inflation and taxes could be less if everyone was smart with their money. But my money is stolen, used to support this system, so I just fish it back by playing the house :/

You must have clicked some at some point, all I get when I have ads on is outdoors gear because I've clicked a few of those ads in the past and my "suggestions" are related to that category.

Pack ripping was huge during COVID. It is always more economical in the long run to buy singles than to rip packs. Generally speaking, the primary purpose of mystery boxes is to dump slow-moving inventory.

Gacha games being normalized didn't help this at all either. SMH at all my younger friends that got pulled into this trap.

Especially difficult to walkback since bribes are basically legal now because once an industry establishes itself it starts buying off politicians.

> (the ones that truly blow my mind are the promo ads for people gambling on buying mystery collectible cards then virtually "ripping" the pack open. Grown adult men paying hundreds of dollars! Absolutely wild.)

Sounds just like a lot of NFTs.

you can work on your timeline and who you follow, maybe use a vpn, and make sure meta doesn't really know who you are. my timeline has none of that shit.

> My Instagram ads are just filled with Polymarket, Kalshi, brand name casinos... it's endless.

At least you get actual ads, not a feed full of Twitter and 4chan screenshots overlaid with SKARS AI slop music and wrapped at the top and bottom by a casino ad.

I have an old reddit account with a lot of karma. I once got an offer for it, I believe around $2,000. Maybe that offer was a scam, but people seem to be contacted to buy their accounts. Its incredible to me how much this is being done by deep pocketed marketers, and I imagine botnet operators working for heaven knows who. This something not talked about much but buying up and re-branding accounts with established viewership or high-karma happens a lot.

I have seen it politically and part of shady marking. I read the girlsgamer sub on reddit and I remember a big influx of "I'm a woman and I support (current game with sexist elements)." Back then you could see everyone's post and comment history. You could see these accounts went quiet a year or two or three ago and their history was very male coded, then came back on-line recently pushing culture-war narratives and describing themselves very differently than their original posts and comments.

I also saw the same thing with some suspicious right-wing posts on some political subs I'm on. Just an old account that had little to no political posting history suddenly coming alive and posting non-stop politics.

I find it interesting and suspicious reddit only started allowing hidden profiles after this and when people started pointing this out.

I think its safe to say all social media is badly compromised and gamed by monied interests.

As someone who makes their living doing PMs this is far from the reality. There's lots of markets that are beatable without a latency edge. Also anyone can apply to be co-located with their servers if you do KYC.

Your didn't finish the explainer:

  A study published in 2017 points out that almost everything known about the 50 Cent Party in the past had been wrong. Most combative posts and commentators attributed to the 50 Cent Party were instead linked to private nationalistic individuals.

I'd hope so. Cleaning up elephant dung is doing something of actual value, unlike this.

this is the kind of thing we need to make illegal

is there a justification for it not being illegal?