I’m glad people can see it as such

Ahem… now do the stock market.

In my country this sort of bet has become quite popular, too. I wish it became illegal.

I mean, they didn’t listen to Australians about Murdoch, why would they listen to them about online sports betting?

I told you betting was haram, bro, I told you!

…

…

THAT is what they increasingly see as a bad thing for society?

The hell?

Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but what Americans think is increasingly not a good guide to take any sort of action in the first place.

That said, I actually salute the real majority of people in the survey that were assaulted with this question and went “the hell are you talking about, get out of my face”. Because yes, the results say 43% responded “bad thing for society”, 7% said “good, actually”, and 50% said “get out of my face” and are the normal ones.

Let this be a lesson not about sports gambling, but about how bad surveys, misleading headlines and moral panics can be used to manipulate large groups of people.

And to be clear, my stance on US sports betting is: get out of my face. I’m more than happy to talk about how the modern online betting industry uses inadequate regulation to bypass pre-existing rules and how this is another vector of the concerns about online regulation of server-side services and their interactions with privacy and censorship.

But “is it a good thing for society” is going in the “get out of my face” column.