Deceptive design features of online gambling platforms with Philip Newall

In this episode, Dr Tsen Vei Lim talks to Dr Philip Newall, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol, UK. The interview covers Philip’s opinion and debate article on sludge, dark patterns and dark nudges: a taxonomy of online gambling platforms’ deceptive design features.

• The rationale behind Philip’s article [01:16]
• A background on the policy landscape associated with online gambling platforms [06:40]
• The three features that online gambling platforms use [09:18]
• The implications of these features for policymakers [14:30]
• The implications of these features for the gambling industry [17:22]
• The implications of these features for the people using online gambling platforms [19:46]
• The end goal of Philip’s research [21:24]

About Tsen Vei Lim: Tsen Vei is an academic fellow supported by the Society for the Study of Addiction, currently based at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. His research integrates computational modelling, experimental psychology, and neuroimaging to understand the neuropsychological basis of addictive behaviours. He holds a PhD in Psychiatry from the University of Cambridge (UK) and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Bath (UK).

About Philip Newall: Philip is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol’s School of Psychological Science. Philip completed a PhD at the University of Stirling in 2016, before going on to postdoctoral research fellowships at Technical University of Munich, the University of Warwick, and Central Queensland University’s Experimental Gambling Research Laboratory. Philip’s research applies concepts and research methods from behavioural science to gambling.

Philip was a member of the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling from 2021 to 2025, which was an advisory group of the Gambling Commission in Great Britain. In the last three years, Philip has been a named researcher on projects funded by the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling, Alberta Gambling Research Institute, Arts and Humanities Research Council, BA/Leverhulme, Canadian Institute for Health Research, Clean Up Gambling, Gambling Research Australia, and the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation. Philip has received honoraria for reviewing from the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling and the Belgium Ministry of Justice, travel and accommodation funding from the Alberta Gambling Research Institute and the Economic and Social Research Institute, and open access fee funding from the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling and Greo Evidence Insights.

Original article: Sludge, dark patterns and dark nudges: A taxonomy of online gambling platforms' deceptive design features https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70085

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Music provided by Jack Shakespeare.

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