Gambling is a net negative, full stop. Some people are really susceptible to it and will lose enormous amounts of money, going bankrupt and forcing society to finance their addiction. Yeah, it’s fun, but it’s just not worth it in terms of overall net harm.

I’m not a fan of the lottery or casinos either, but at least forcing people to clear the hurdle of leaving their house and going in person is something and it can be semi-justified as longstanding tradition.

App-based gambling (online gambling, basically) has pretty much no limits and someone can wager at any point they’re conscious. So you have a megacorp using algorithms to essentially game as much money out of people as they can, and some people are going to just get wrecked by that, and society bears the costs. Furthermore it makes gambling such a lowest common denominator activity without any charm whatsoever, if it even ever had any. Beep boop, oops lost $2000.

Insult to injury is the constant ad spam for it.