alt Hacker News>Can we do gambling ads next?
As long as we ban ads for stock trading platforms (i.e. gambling for the professional classes) at the same time.
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I think a fair and reasonable advertisement policy is to ban all advertisements during "children's programming hours", or 0800 to 1600 when school is not in session. During "Prime Time" hours of 0500-0800 and 1600-2300, adverts should be limited to luxury goods (e.g., fashion), government PSAs, and non-addictive goods or services (NO drugs, NO tobacco, NO gambling, and NO stock trading, to name but a few). Between 2300 and 0400, allow "free reign" on subscription channels but still bar "vice" or addiction ads.
We've got a century of data showing laissez-faire approaches to advertising results in maximum harm to a society, and ample recent data from the internet age showing how dark patterns in psychology are exploited by advertisers to drive outcomes.
We have to do better, and the UK's step is at least an attempt to stem the harm. I can't fault entities from at least trying to do better.
There is an important difference. With stocks, the punter wins on average. With gambling, the punter loses on average.
You can still lose all your money on stocks, with a combination of bad choices and bad luck. But it is much easier to lose it on the horses.
Wait until you hear about how CFD trading is legal in large parts of the world.
Irrelevant. Stocks are a share of a company. The have book value and intrinsic value. Freedom to buy and sell is essential.
Of course, crypto speculation is something different altogether. Maybe you were thinking about all the poor schleps buying Bitcoin for $100k?
Even then, your chances of winning are around 50/50 and no one is forcing you to cash out.
I don't disagree, but stock trading ads are in some ways already more strictly regulated than gambling ads here. Gambling ads are required to have a vague "please gamble responsibly" statement, but ads for CFD trading platforms are required to have a prominent warning stating the exact percentage of their accounts which lose money (often >75%). The gambling ads don't have to tell you the real odds of coming out ahead.
e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM_zuudkSnY