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This happens at every gambling company in regulated markets like the US or Europe.

For comparison, there are offline casinos who use targeted adverts saying that they do not comply with regulators, and their adverts are designed in such a way as to appeal to people with gambling addiction (usually showing some kind of live play, which is banned in every regulated market afaik).

You can be sceptical of the motives of individuals but there are very strong corporate incentives from state regulators (in the US, particularly those with physical casinos).

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> This happens at every gambling company in regulated markets like the US or Europe.

No something clearly different happens in regulated markets. There's a massive difference between "This would make us more money, but we won't do that because it's unethical" and "I wish we could get away with doing this unethical thing to make more money, but sadly current regulations make this one unprofitable for now. Lets increase our lobbying spend to try to fix that."

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What usually happens is they talk about statistics rather than demographics. Eg “when doing x we’ve seen a 5% rise in engagement but a 50% rise in spend from those engaged”

Nobody is actually blind to the reality of the stats but this kind approach makes it both easier to dehumanise their actions as well as giving them plausible deniability when asked if they target specific demographics such as addicts.

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