The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

    You may have a cool product in the field of sports betting, casinos, or
    lotteries. But almost all social networks and search engines won’t let you
    advertise without a license from the required jurisdiction.

Good. You should face social stigma for creating products that literally ruin people's lives.

What's the author trying to say here?

It's good that the law isn't the only line between good and evil. A bit of stigma is a bottom-up way for people to shape society.

If nobody invites you to dinner parties because you run a startup that combines payday-lending and day-trading, that's a good thing. It's free alpha for companies doing more worthwhile things.

> When posting job openings, you will always have to beat around the bush, without using direct language. And only then, when the candidate has already agreed to an interview or even after it, do you tell them what kind of content they will be working with every day.

> Employees join such projects for various reasons. Some realize that the pay is better than in legitimate projects. Others come because they couldn’t find a job where they wanted to, or because they are simply interested in working on something forbidden. And then a good company saving the world will come along and offer them a job, and they’ll leave. Building a stable team from people with this kind of motivation is hard.

I think OP made this whole article up. Everyone that applies for Aylo knows exactly what they're applying for. The pay is below-average because (a) there's not actually a lot of money in porn and (b) there's no shortage of dudes that want to work in it.

A well written and thoughtful article! Thanks for sharing.

It's been a while since I've read article on something like online gambling without feeling like the author was trying to proselytize.

Edit:

I appreciate the human perspective shared by the article, and get the feeling that OP offers a warning of the consequences of working in stigmatized fields. Ofc online gambling (and gambling in general tbh) is a terrible thing that ruins lives.

I didn’t expect him to describe his own field as illegitimate. Somehow knowing you are doing bad things is even worse than a rationalization. Why spend your time with people who don’t believe in what they do?

I worked as a tech in porn in my very early 20s. My experience was the opposite, interviewers later on remembered my CV because I was transparent about it. In 2009-2011 weren’t many places where a junior developer could work on code that served 100M ad impressions /month and 3-5M requests on the pages. Gambling and porn both hook into your dopamine systems, but mixing them together does not make sense at all. The consequences of watching pornography are two orders of magnitude milder than a gambling addiction.

I cannot care less what (legal) porn content people consume in the intimacy of their room. I cannot understand being prude about this. Like all things, over-use is unhealthy, but I have yet to see studies proving the societal damage caused by porn. Before you ask: the loneliness epidemic (which intuitively translates to more porn consumption) is just a symptom of people losing a "third place" to socialize, or not having their own place. Those are rooted in the shitty economic landscape we're in, and uncontrolled urban sprawl with no public transit.

Gambling/betting though? Overwhelming societal damage with basically no upside beyond the ghouls in charge. Regulate this shit to death, tyvm.

The title is "Stigma is a tax on every operational decision"

Woe is me, I can't make AI porn and still get status on social media. Fucking loser.

> A regular provider charges a regular commission but will not work with you, while another will want a commission 10 times higher and will agree, but may stop working with you at any time.

I know I will get downvoted for this because it is an unpopular opinion, but this exactly the reason why we need bitcoin as a means of payments without any middlemen involved.