"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.<p>You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.<p>Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.<p>You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs." -Banksy
I'd suggest if you don't understand why this is outrageous you just take a step back away from this topic, rather than try to comment on a problem you don't understand.<p>You likely come from a culture that lets pharmaceutical companies advertise on TV. You likely come from a culture that doesn't restrict fast food companies from advertising during children's programming. You likely come from a culture that doesn't force all product placement to be clearly marked with an icon on the programme.<p>Advertising in the UK is much more heavily regulated than in other countries. We don't believe in the right for companies to advertise whenever or wherever they like.<p>Gambling is fully legalised, in part so that it is easier to regulate, including regulating when and where it is advertised. There is talk from banning gambling companies from being shirt sponsors.<p>This is, I think, a more mature approach than banning or heavily restricting online gambling and pretending it isn't a problem.
Let me rephrase this "Mom Blogs put links to Gambling Sites to get their readers, especially new Mothers, hooked to Gambling"<p>Sure, BIG Gambling Company is bad.
But the so called 'mom blogs' have no ethics and decency for doing this.<p>If I were a reader, I might not trust the Gambling Company but I have a relationship ( as a reader ) with the Mom Blog owner.
And it's that person who has abused our relationship.<p>The outrage should be directed more at these women ( I assume ) who are basically predators preying on new mothers who might be at an emotionally vulnerable stage of their lives.
As mentioned in the article, it's regular blackhat consisting of buying unmarked links to rank better on Google. If you own a blog, you usually get those messages weekly or even daily offering to pay $150-400 for it. Regardless of niche. Gaming affiliates are notorious for it.<p>It should be shunned but the headline kinda makes it seem like something it isn't, although correct. They aren't primarily after the blog audience but rather Google.
I'd agree with the notion suggested in the article it may not even be about getting mothers to gamble as much as it is an attempt at blackhat SEO. Recruiting a few new gamblers is small potatoes compared to redirecting a large amount of web traffic for gambling-related keywords on Google.<p>Several gambling firms are aggressively throwing money at the problem of trying to manipulate PageRank-like algorithms. I've seen examples of them sponsoring open source projects, ostensibly in order to purchase a link from a high ranking website.<p>Makes sense though when basically your entire budget goes to marketing.
Even Disney was engaged in stealth marketing, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if a less reputable industry such as gambling is engaged in stealth marketing.<p>Disney Puts Some ‘Frozen 2’ Promotions on Ice After Twitter Flap
<a href="https://archive.is/RFsLV" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/RFsLV</a>
I get anywhere from 50 to 100 emails every month asking me to put gambling/casino links on my site.<p>Let’s say the average is 75. Lets deduct another 25 because it’s probably the same guy.<p>At 200$ per link (low end) thats 10k per month.<p>50 blog posts with each one linking to a gambling site is kind of unrealistic though. But the numbers (and the demand) is there. I am sure the actual market is in the hundreds of millions for this kind of a scheme.<p>And even though it is easy money, I think Google probably has a good grasp on identifying that a mommy blog is linking out to a gambling network.
If you have a popular blog or social media account on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, you may receive marketing emails from various brands, big or small, asking you to include links to their products or low-quality VPN services. The internet is essentially a colossal marketing machine. While some people on HN believe that Reddit reviews are authentic because they are created by humans, there is a possibility that they are also paid (although I do not have any evidence to support this claim).
Wow fuck the bloggers who played along with this.<p>I get daily requests to put up free articles on my site and I tell these folks that I pre-screen all links, no matter what. Crypto and/or gambling? Always a hard no.
To put it in perspective, our company works with a casino that wants to target women in marketing efforts, but that extends as far as stock photos and general language, not telling mothers gambling is a stress reliever or financial solution. The headline of this article should be updated because it's not illegal to advertise gambling to mothers or to pay for ads or blogs. It's illegal (in some places) to pretend gambling is risk free to relieve stress and financial burdens.
This is "just" the usual, paying influencers to push products. The product is legal, advertising via influencers is legal. Except this time it's not teenagers and hand creams but new mothers and gambling.<p>The gambling companies are likely in the clear. They are allowed to advertise to everyone one (maybe over 18 which mum blogs mostly cover).<p>So I guess it's bad but I'm not sure which part of the chain is the weakest link. Is advertising gambling the bad thing? Maybe. Or advertising via influencers? This should certainly be more regulated.<p>I struggle to be outraged by people doing legal things, I'd rather think about what is wrong with the law itself.
I was a professional gambler for several years. I eventually gave up because it wasn't hard to find lines that had been mispriced and profitable gamblers get cut off quickly. Coral in particular ran a very simple algo, once you were up £1000 they cut your maximum bet by 90%.<p>I became convinced that bookmakers strategy was to entice those with a predilection to addiction and then take all their money.
No one going to a mommy blog looking for baby food recipes ends up signing up or online gambling somehow. This is a story about SEO/ search engine ranking but that wouldn't get clicks. Whatever you think about online gambling, the narrative presented here is really distorting the truth.