Gambling, like a lot of other things, is a high dopamine reward behavior which can be fun recreationally but also lead to serious addictions. Prohibition-only approaches to things like this tend to just lead to it becoming a widespread source of funds for organized crime, and so I tend to favor a public health perspective which involves legalization with heavy regulation and taxation + behavioral health support as a part of a robust safety net.

That having been said, this to me is a strong indication that there are some things it should not be legal to bet on.

But also I’m also pretty sure that this is illegal under the Commodities Exchange Act already? So this feels like either a loophole in emphatic need of closing, or, more likely, the law just no longer fucking mattering under this administration because too many of the enforcers are corrupt.

I am a big believer in regulation, and some governments right now are in a position where they can be pressured to take anti-monopoly action against Amazon, which I want very much to see. Being in the U.S. as I am right now, though… There are some state governments I would like to see act (and shout-out to California for doing so here), but I am also brainstorming other nonviolent disruptive action which could be taken, because the federal government right now is actual fascists and Amazon is in league with them.

I was looking over instances sorted by uptime, saw one that had high uptime, a lot of users, and a literal promise that shit will just work in its name. I did a bit of scoping to see that it was easy to view communities across all instances from SJW and figured, fuck it, seems like as good a choice as any.

Frustrating, but I appreciate your answer; thank you.

Why is “(most favored nation status)” in parentheses?

I have often wondered whether targeted internet boycott days would shake up AWS, but I don’t know enough about their billing structure to run the numbers to see how much that would dig into AWS profits + how much of their income is flat subscription fees vs. billing on number of calls and haven’t had a chance to dig into it yet.

The other commenters here are right about Amazon’s initial methods, but I’m also going to highly recommend Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification for a detailed explanation of how this happens (including a breakdown on Amazon specifically) and what to do about it.

Congratulations!

I believe it’s a 9/11 reference, with the “two very big reasons” alluding to the Twin Towers.

It’s not quite the movie/documentary you are looking for, but I have seen https://leavingmaga.org/ spread around.