Safer Gambling Tools - Do You Actually Use Them or Are They Just There?

[TaffyTipster]

Honest inventory.

I have deposit limits set on two of my accounts.

Set them three years ago after a bad Six Nations period. Bronwyn had said something. I went on the apps that evening and set limits that felt responsible.

The limits are still there.

They've never been triggered.

Because I set them at amounts that felt like genuine restrictions at the time but that I never actually reach in a normal month anyway.

So technically: I use deposit limits. Practically: I have deposit limits that have never done anything.

I think I set them to feel like I was doing something rather than to actually restrict anything.

Anyone else have safer gambling tools that are essentially decorative.

 

[SharpEddie47]

Set a session time limit on one account in 2019.

Thirty minute reminder. After thirty minutes a pop-up asks if I want to continue.

I click continue every single time.

The reminder has never once resulted in me stopping.

What it has resulted in is a mild irritation every thirty minutes.

The pop-up is designed to create a moment of reflection. What it actually creates is a brief interruption before I click continue and return to exactly what I was doing.

Friction that doesn't create enough resistance to change the behavior. Just enough to be annoying.

 

[FadeThePublic]

The tools are built to satisfy regulators not to work.

That sounds cynical. It's the accurate description of how they've been designed and implemented.

A deposit limit that the user sets themselves and can change with a 24 hour cooling period after completing a quiz is not a meaningful deposit limit.

A session reminder that requires one click to dismiss is not a meaningful session reminder.

The tools exist to demonstrate compliance with responsible gambling requirements. They're not engineered to actually reduce harm in people who have developed problematic patterns.

The people who need them least will set them and feel responsible. The people who need them most will work around them.

That's not accidental product design failure. That's intentional product design success from the operator's perspective.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

I genuinely did not know most of these tools existed until right now.

I've just looked at my FanDuel account.

Deposit limits. Wagering limits. Session time limits. Self-exclusion options.

All there. Never seen them before today.

I don't know whether that's because they're hidden or because I never looked.

Looked now: they're not hidden exactly. Just not in the obvious place.

Three clicks from the home screen.

The SGP builder is the first thing you see when you open the app.

The responsible gambling tools are three clicks in.

That prioritization is a design choice.

 

[CoachTony_Bets]

The three clicks vs. front page framing says everything.

The product that generates revenue: immediate. Full screen. Constantly promoted.

The product that reduces revenue: findable if you specifically look.

I've used spend trackers on two accounts. Went in after a particularly bad stretch and turned them on.

Watched the numbers for two weeks. Then stopped checking.

The tracker still runs. I stopped looking at it because looking at it required confronting numbers I didn't want to see.

The tool worked. I stopped using the tool.

That distinction matters. The problem wasn't access to the tool.

 

[DublinDegen]

self-excluded from every licensed UK operator in 2021...

gamstop... the national scheme... registered and excluded myself for five years...

it worked for about three weeks...

then found offshore sites that don't operate under UK license...

not hard to find... fifteen minutes of googling...

deposited there instead...

the self-exclusion didn't stop the betting... it just redirected it from regulated operators with some protections to unregulated operators with none...

ended up in a worse situation than before the exclusion...

not saying self-exclusion is useless... for some people it works...

but for me at my worst the exclusion was an obstacle i navigated rather than a stop...

because the thing driving the betting doesn't care about your gamstop registration...

 

[oli_sussex]

Conor's experience is the documented failure mode that the industry uses to argue that tools don't work and the harm reduction community uses to argue that tools need to be better.

Both sides use the same evidence differently.

At the exchange I watched accounts that had self-excluded return through linked accounts, family members' accounts, VPN-accessed offshore operators.

The self-exclusion was effective for low-motivation users. Ineffective for high-motivation users.

The people most harmed by gambling are also the most motivated to circumvent protections.

That's not a design flaw. It's a fundamental limit of any voluntary or operator-side tool.

The only self-exclusion that's harder to circumvent is financial. Blocking gambling transactions at the bank level.

Some UK banks now offer this. It's more effective because the friction is at a different point in the chain.