There are a lot of people struggling. Tell them it's not their fault and that Group X is responsible. Especially when there are few members of group X they've actually interacted with, it's pretty effective. Throw in the fact that they have largely been raised in a religion that promotes blind faith as a virtue and critical thinking as a vice and you have a soft target for scam artists.

I kind of doubt Trump had any direct involvement. But, when you're a sociopathic piece of shit who wants to take advantage of people, you hire sociopathic pieces of shit who want to take advantage of people to work for you. I'm sure they knew their objective was to get as much money as possible, even if Trump never specifically said anything about recurring billing.

For comparison's sake when I donated to Biden's campaign, the standard option presented was one time payments in generally small denominations. I believe after you choose there is a message that pops up telling you blah blah blah election is important blah blah blah would really appreciate it if you'd make it a monthly gift. It was all very clear. Now granted, "Joe" kept emailing and messaging for more money and eventually I wound up doing a monthly, but while obnoxious it was all very up front.

Oh, I totally agree that any campaign never set an auto withdraws because well its stupid.  I am positive that there was a discussion and someone stated we can just set all donations to auto withdraws.  This should gain us a lot of money in a short period of time because usually by default even if you do auto withdraws, it would be on a monthly basis.  The fact that they changed it to weekly says a lot about the desperation of the operation in which they totally did not care about the blow back because Trump supporters will dismiss it or the right wing media will say nothing.  Even if Trump did not give the ok, I cannot see a scenario where given the chance he would say no.  The fact he is not apologizing and getting in front of this story says a lot as well.  If you admit nothing wrong, nothing happened.

I see you guys are blowing this a bit out of proportion. The weekly thing is pretty aggressive and the "money bomb" also being pre-checked isn't too cool. Just in case you only listened to your talking head I'll also add some snipits from a left center source.

"what the Blatts believed was duplicity was actually an intentional scheme to boost revenues by the Trump campaign and the for-profit company that processed its online donations, WinRed."

"In the final two and a half months of 2020, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts issued more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors. All campaigns make refunds for various reasons, including to people who give more than the legal limit. But the sum the Trump operation refunded dwarfed that of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time."

"Marketers have long used ruses like prechecked boxes to steer American consumers into unwanted purchases, like magazine subscriptions. But consumer advocates said deploying the practice on voters in the heat of a presidential campaign — at such volume and with withdrawals every week — had much more serious ramifications.

“It’s unfair, it’s unethical and it’s inappropriate,” said Ira Rheingold, the executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.

Over all, the Trump operation refunded 10.7 percent of the money it raised on WinRed in 2020; the Biden operation’s refund rate on ActBlue, the parallel Democratic online donation-processing platform, was 2.2 percent, federal records show. Donors typically said they intended to give once or twice and only later discovered on their bank statements and credit card bills that they were donating over and over again. Some, like Mr. Blatt, who died of cancer in February, sought an injunction from their banks and credit cards. Others pursued refunds directly from WinRed, which typically granted them to avoid more costly formal disputes.

WinRed said that every donor receives at least one follow-up email about pending repeat donations in advance and that the company makes it “exceptionally easy,” with 24-hour customer service, for people to request their money back. “WinRed wants donors to be happy, and puts a premium on customer support,” said Gerrit Lansing, WinRed’s president. “Donors are the lifeblood of G.O.P. campaigns.” He noted that Democrats and ActBlue had also used recurring programs.

Not necessarily the same thing since we don't know exactly how involved Trump was but this reminds me of the fiasco in Ohio when they put a 3rd party for profit company in charge of issuing traffic tickets using cameras. I couldn't find the article I read but here is a bit of an update ... turns out many of the towns liked the easy money too .

There's no reason I would need a talking head to come to the conclusion that this is grossly immoral. All it takes is a little bit of common sense to figure out that taking money from people every week is grossly immoral unless you make it clear that you're going to take money from them every week.

I have no idea how you read that article and thought that article supported the proposition we were overselling this. You went through it and posted the least sketchy details, which are still super fucking sketchy. The refund rates being higher mean many more people regretted donating. Emails afterwards are no substitute for advance warning. After donating to Biden I received emails like every other day, none of which I read, because I figured they were the typical promotional spam I get from every other company. Biden did do a recurring program, but I can personally verify that it was crystal clear what I would need to click on if I wanted to do that.  

If we were to counterbalance that with some other quotes...

"The Trump operation was not done modifying the yellow boxes. Soon, the fact that donations would be withdrawn weekly was taken out of boldface type, according to archived versions of the president’s website, and moved beneath other bold text."

“It started to go absolutely wild,” said one fraud investigator with Wells Fargo. “It just became a pattern,” said another at Capital One. A consumer representative for USAA, which primarily serves military families, recalled an older veteran who discovered repeated WinRed charges from donating to Mr. Trump only after calling to have his balance read to him by phone."

"Several bank representatives who fielded fraud claims directly from consumers estimated that WinRed cases, at their peak, represented as much as 1 to 3 percent of their workload. An executive for one of the nation’s larger credit-card issuers confirmed that WinRed at its height accounted for a similar percentage of its formal disputes.

That figure may seem small at first glance, but financial experts said it was a shockingly large percentage, considering that political donations represent a tiny fraction of the overall United States economy."

Harry Brignull, a user-experience designer in London who coined the term “dark patterns” for manipulative digital marketing practices, said the Trump team’s techniques were a classic of the “deceptive design” genre.

“It should be in textbooks of what you shouldn’t do,” he said."

And of course, we can look at these prechecked boxes to see just how things progressed...

This is the kind of shit that pops up when you're trying to stream illegal content on sketchy sites. Clearly designed to hide the additional donations rather than make them clear. 

The last bit is classic whataboutism. I did a bit of research on for profit ticketing. It is an absolutely HUGE problem. But other people doing really shitty things does not make other things less shitty.

How has anyone blown this out of proportion?

Not whataboutism in any form or fashion the only thing making it even somewhat related to this is the third party for profit part.  Again it put me in mind of the "village" in Ohio that was ticketing people for even 1 mile over the speed limit (not shone in the linked article since I could not find the original) via a third party monitoring the cameras.  It is entirely possible most of this was driven by WinRed. It is also entirely possible people within Trump's circle and even Trump himself were aware of the tactic employed with the pre-checked boxes. That said I am very leery when a 3rd party gets involved in things like this or the tickets when they stand to profit by being shady.

I really didn't defend anything did I?  I said i thought you guys were blowing it out of proportion ... no idea how I could have thought that when " Trump rips off his brain dead supporters who worship him as the messiah :D " is repeated no less than 5 times through quotes .... no idea at all.

As you pointed out "You went through it and posted the least sketchy details, which are still super fucking sketchy." I know I included the sketchy parts (trying to still provide balance something I don't see out of you and yours very often (more on that in a moment). Hell I even quoted the NEW YORK TIMES ... are they Left, Center, or Right?

If including sketchy parts wasn't intentional then:

"Marketers have long used ruses like prechecked boxes to steer American consumers into unwanted purchases, like magazine subscriptions. But consumer advocates said deploying the practice on voters in the heat of a presidential campaign — at such volume and with withdrawals every week — had much more serious ramifications.

“It’s unfair, it’s unethical and it’s inappropriate,” said Ira Rheingold, the executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.

Would have simply been:

Marketers have long used ruses like prechecked boxes to steer American consumers into unwanted purchases, like magazine subscriptions.

OR

WinRed said that every donor receives at least one follow-up email about pending repeat donations in advance and that the company makes it “exceptionally easy,” with 24-hour customer service, for people to request their money back. “WinRed wants donors to be happy, and puts a premium on customer support,” said Gerrit Lansing, WinRed’s president. “Donors are the lifeblood of G.O.P. campaigns.” He noted that Democrats and ActBlue had also used recurring programs.

would have been:

Democrats and ActBlue had also used recurring programs.

I will give you credit for at least acknowledging that, I assume ActBlue, worked contributors over to get recurring donations as well.  "Now granted, "Joe" kept emailing and messaging for more money and eventually I wound up doing a monthly, but while obnoxious it was all very up front."

It is something I don't see all that often even on this site.  More often it is disrespect to the other side (read the posts above this one and tell me the side you argue for is respectful) and that comes from both "Libtards" and "Republicunts". It is often unbalanced "reporting" or youtube commentary from one side or the other.

Edit:

oh and if you liked the for profits running the cameras for traffic tickets have you paid attention to the abuses in search and seizure laws that are funding some police departments another thing that makes me shake my head

"Not whataboutism in any form or fashion the only thing making it even somewhat related to this is the third party for profit part.  Again it put me in mind of the "village" in Ohio that was ticketing people for even 1 mile over the speed limit (not shone in the linked article since I could not find the original) via a third party monitoring the cameras.  It is entirely possible most of this was driven by WinRed. It is also entirely possible people within Trump's circle and even Trump himself were aware of the tactic employed with the pre-checked boxes. That said I am very leery when a 3rd party gets involved in things like this or the tickets when they stand to profit by being shady."

My interpretation was that mentioning Ohio's ticketing scheme was to point out "other folks do this to" to make this seem less bad. If that wasn't the point, then my bad. 

"I really didn't defend anything did I?  I said i thought you guys were blowing it out of proportion ... no idea how I could have thought that when " Trump rips off his brain dead supporters who worship him as the messiah :D " is repeated no less than 5 times through quotes .... no idea at all."

Quoting a post isn't "repeating it". I don't think by quoting me you're fully endorsing my views. If that's the part you took issue with, better to respond to the person who said it directly. The way you said it made it seem like everyone, or at least the majority, of people responding are overreacting.

"As you pointed out "You went through it and posted the least sketchy details, which are still super fucking sketchy." I know I included the sketchy parts (trying to still provide balance something I don't see out of you and yours very often (more on that in a moment). Hell I even quoted the NEW YORK TIMES ... are they Left, Center, or Right?

If including sketchy parts wasn't intentional then:"

You really didn't give much detail on what exactly the quotes were supposed to prove, so I had to do my best guess to interpret what they meant. Since the beginning of your post said that people were overblowing this, I assumed the quotes were intended to support that point, which I think was reasonable. If that's not the case, then I guess it was an honest misunderstanding.

"I will give you credit for at least acknowledging that, I assume ActBlue, worked contributors over to get recurring donations as well.  "Now granted, "Joe" kept emailing and messaging for more money and eventually I wound up doing a monthly, but while obnoxious it was all very up front."

It is something I don't see all that often even on this site.  More often it is disrespect to the other side (read the posts above this one and tell me the side you argue for is respectful) and that comes from both "Libtards" and "Republicunts". It is often unbalanced "reporting" or youtube commentary from one side or the other."

I'm not sure where you get that idea... a lot of left wing people here were Berniecrats who don't particularly love Joe Biden and I'm definitely not the first to criticize him or his campaign. That being said, I don't think that there is anything morally wrong with being aggressive about getting donations... that's kind of what fundraising is. The important thing is that you're transparent so that people know exactly what they're doing.

As for respectful, some democrats are, some are not. On a personal level, not as a mod, I'm far more interested in who's right and can support their position with evidence. You can be respectful and polite and be advocating for awful things while spreading lies.

The TL:DR version is that my interpretation was that you were trying to downplay the situation. If that wasn't the case, and you think it's indefensible, then we're in agreement.

Edit: Again, not altogether sure that it's relevant, but yeah, the way some precincts use tickets and the bail system is royally fucked.

So... NY State now allows online betting on sports and pretty much everything else, and I have really mixed feelings on this.

On the one hand, I think that people generally should be free to do what they wish so long as it is not impacting another person. On the other hand, there are some instances where something is harmful enough (i.e. heroin) that the government should step in and if not ban then regulate.

Gambling may be one of those things. We know pretty well from studies how effective random reward schedules are, which is why they are used so often. I don't think gambling should be outright banned, but erecting a few barriers to at least give gamblers a chance to pause and think on it doesn't seem unreasonable.

You can argue that since other states will allow gambling, it is pointless for NY to try not to, and you might as well get part of the revenue from NY gamblers, but ignoring federalism concerns, do people think that gambling is something the government should regulate?

Naw, we already have plenty of ways to gamble.  Its really no different from anything done in excess.  The people that go overboard with it usually find something else to destroy their lives.  Basically any particular thing people find either addictive or entertaining can be abused, at some point the government cannot be everyone nanny for everything, but they can give people assistance when they fall.

I don't really buy that argument, because if you make it, then it can probably be used to legitimize deregulation of any market. Guns, alcohol, drugs, etc.

Sure there are SOME people who would gamble no matter what. But if they literally don't have to leave the house to do it, more people are going to vs if they had to actually go to a casino. Obviously, the reason that there is a push to legalize online gambling is because they anticipate way more people will gamble if they do so.

Government can't regulate everything, but certain things raise enough problems that they do, i.e. hard drugs. Unless you're a true libertarian, there are bound to be some things that should be limited. I feel gambling ought to be one of them.

As for providing them help after the fact, that begs the question. If the people running the online betting are paying for that, then that's one thing. The argument is that the tax revenue will support things like education and such which will benefit all of us in the long run. But, intuitively I feel that the amount of money that society has to pay out to help gambling addicts and others affected (i.e. children who need support that their parents can't provide) will be greater than the amount we get out of it. And we know that the people most likely to struggle with gambling are those least able to afford it http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2014/01/001.html. So the end result is funneling money upwards.

They got wall street, so they are gambling on much bigger things every day with much higher sums already.

But yeah, gambling is not a thing I support very much, and actually think it needs to be reigned in a bit.