Computers and the Internet

Subterms

    Latest story

    88 Shares99 Views

    Why Peng Shuai Frustrates China's Propaganda Machine

    by

    Accustomed to forcing messages on audiences at home and abroad, its propaganda machine hasn’t learned how to craft a narrative that stands up to scrutiny.The Chinese government has become extremely effective in controlling what the country’s 1.4 billion people think and talk about.But influencing the rest of the world is a different matter, as Peng Shuai has aptly demonstrated.Chinese state media and its journalists have offered one piece of evidence after another to prove the star Chinese tennis player was safe and sound despite her public accusation of sexual assault against a powerful former vice premier.One Beijing-controlled outlet claimed it obtained an email she wrote in which she denied the accusations. Another offered up a video of Ms. Peng at a dinner, in which she and her companions rather conspicuously discussed the date to prove that it was recorded this past weekend.The international outcry grew only louder. Instead of persuading the world, China’s ham-handed response has become a textbook example of its inability to communicate with an audience that it can’t control through censorship and coercion.The ruling Communist Party communicates through one-way, top-down messaging. It seems to have a hard time understanding that persuasive narratives must be backed by facts and verified by credible, independent sources. In its official comments, China’s foreign ministry has mostly dodged questions about Ms. Peng, claiming first to be unaware of the matter, then that the topic fell outside its purview. On Tuesday, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman, leaned on a familiar tactic: questioning the motives behind the coverage of Ms. Peng’s allegations. “I hope certain people will stop malicious hype, not to mention to politicize it,” he told reporters.China has grown more sophisticated in recent years at using the power of the internet to advance a more positive, less critical narrative — an effort that appears to work from time to time. But at its heart, China’s propaganda machine still believes the best way to make problems disappear is to shout down the other side. It can also threaten to close off access to its vast market and booming economy to silence companies and governments that don’t buy their line.“Messages like these are meant as a demonstration of power: ‘We are telling you that she is fine, and who are you to say otherwise?’” Mareike Ohlberg, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a Berlin research institute, wrote on Twitter. “It’s not meant to convince people but to intimidate and demonstrate the power of the state.”Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has tightened limits on relatively independent media outlets and critical online voices.Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesChina has a history of less-than-believable testimonials. A jailed prominent lawyer denounced her son on state television for fleeing the country. A Hong Kong bookstore manager who was detained for selling books about the private lives of Chinese leaders said after his release that he had to make a dozen recorded confessions before his captors were satisfied.This time, the world of women’s tennis isn’t playing along and has suggested it will stop holding events in China until it is sure Ms. Peng is truly free of government control. The biggest names in tennis — Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic, among many others — don’t seem to be afraid to lose access to a potential market of 1.4 billion tennis fans either. The pushback is problematic because the Winter Olympics in Beijing are just weeks away from opening.The country’s huge army of propagandists has failed its top leader Xi Jinping’s expectations that it take control of the global narrative about China. But it shouldn’t take all the blame: The failure is ingrained in the controlling nature of China’s authoritarian system.“It can make Peng Shuai play any role, including putting up a show of being free,” Pin Ho, a New York-based media businessman, wrote on Twitter.For Chinese officials in charge of crisis management, he continued, such control is routine. “But for the free world,” he said, “this is even more frightening than forced confessions.”One of the biggest giveaways that Ms. Peng isn’t free to speak her mind is that her name remains censored on the Chinese internet.“As long as coverages about her inside and outside China are different, she’s not speaking freely,” said Rose Luqiu, an assistant professor of journalism at the Hong Kong Baptist University.Ms. Peng appeared in a live video call with the president of the International Olympic Committee and other officials within the organization. But women’s tennis officials still have their doubts.Greg Martin/IOC, Agence France-Presse, via Getty ImagesDespite the outpouring of concern about Ms. Peng’s well-being on Twitter and other online platforms that are blocked in China, the Chinese public has little knowledge of the discussions.Late Friday night, as the momentum of the hashtag #whereispengshuai was building on Twitter, I couldn’t find any discussion of the question on Chinese social media. Still, Ms. Peng had clearly caught the attention of politically observant Chinese. I messaged a friend in Beijing who was usually on top of hot topics and asked generally, in coded words, if she had heard about a huge campaign to find someone. “PS?” the friend guessed, using Ms. Peng’s initials.It’s hard to estimate how many Chinese people learned about Ms. Peng’s allegation, which she detailed in a post on Chinese social media earlier this month. Her post — which named Zhang Gaoli, a former top Communist Party leader, as her assailant — was deleted within minutes. One Weibo social media user asked in a comment whether saving a screenshot of Ms. Peng’s post was incriminating. Another Weibo user, in a comment, described being too scared to share the post.They have good reasons to be afraid. Beijing has made it easier to detain or charge people for what they say online. Many people get their social media accounts deleted for simply sharing content that the censors deemed inappropriate, including #MeToo-related content.Ms. Peng accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier and top Communist Party leader, of sexual assault in a social media post.How Hwee Young/European Pressphoto AgencyChina has been bitter about its poor image in the Western mainstream news media and has talked for years about taking control of the narrative. Mr. Xi, the top leader, said that he hoped the country would have the capacity to shape a global narrative that’s compatible with its rising status in the world. “Tell the China story well,” he instructed. “Create a credible, lovable and respectable image of China.”Official media has raised the suggestion that Covid-19 emerged from a lab in the United States and spread the unproven allegation on Facebook and Twitter. China released thousands of videos on YouTube and other Western platforms in which Uyghurs said they were “very free” and “very happy” while the Communist Party was carrying out repressive policies against them and other Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.In reality, China is less respected, and its narratives less credible, since Mr. Xi took power nine years ago. He cracked down on relatively independent media outlets and eliminated critical online voices within the country. He unleashed diplomats and nationalistic youth who would roar back any hint of criticism or belittlement.“There are three things that are inevitable in life: life, death and humiliating China,” a reader commented on a recent column of mine.Despite China’s relatively fast economic growth and relatively competent response to the pandemic, the country’s deteriorating human rights records and its uncompromising international stance are not helping its image. The negative views of China in the vast majority of the world’s advanced economies reached a historic high last year, according to Pew Research Center.China can’t respond to the questions about Ms. Peng effectively because it can’t even address the problem directly. The subject of Ms. Peng’s sexual assault allegation, Mr. Zhang, had been one of the Communist Party’s most powerful officials before he retired. The party sees criticism of a top leader as a direct attack on the whole organization, so it won’t repeat her allegation. As a result, the state media journalists who are trying to argue that Ms. Peng is fine can’t even refer to it directly.“I don’t believe Ms. Peng has received retaliation and repression speculated by foreign media for the thing people talked about,” Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times.Giulia Marchi for The New York TimesFor Hu Xijin, the editor of the nationalist Global Times tabloid, the allegation against Mr. Zhang has become “the thing.” “I don’t believe Peng Shuai has received retaliation and repression speculated by foreign media for the thing people talked about,” he wrote on Twitter.Mr. Zhang can’t even be discussed online in China. Those who do call him “kimchi” because his given name sounds like the name of an ancient Korean dynasty.If Mr. Hu, China’s spin master, could speak more plainly, and if the Chinese people had the freedom to discuss Ms. Peng and her allegation, official media might understand how to build a narrative. Instead, Mr. Hu alternates between trying to change the conversation and trying to shut it down completely.“For those who truly care about safety of Peng Shuai, her appearances of these days are enough to relieve them or eliminate most of their worries,” he wrote. “But for those aiming to attack China’s system and boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics, facts, no matter how many, don’t work for them.” More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      How Facebook Failed to Stem Racist Abuse of England’s Soccer Players

      by

      In May 2019, Facebook asked the organizing bodies of English soccer to its London offices off Regent’s Park. On the agenda: what to do about the growing racist abuse on the social network against Black soccer players.At the meeting, Facebook gave representatives from four of England’s main soccer organizations — the Football Association, the Premier League, the English Football League and the Professional Footballers’ Association — what they felt was a brushoff, two people with knowledge of the conversation said. Company executives told the group that they had many issues to deal with, including content about terrorism and child sex abuse.A few months later, Facebook provided soccer representatives with an athlete safety guide, including directions on how players could shield themselves from bigotry using its tools. The message was clear: It was up to the players and the clubs to protect themselves online.The interactions were the start of what became a more than two-year campaign by English soccer to pressure Facebook and other social media companies to rein in online hate speech against their players. Soccer officials have since met numerous times with the platforms, sent an open letter calling for change and organized social media boycotts. Facebook’s employees have joined in, demanding that it to do more to stop the harassment.The pressure intensified after the European Championship last month, when three of England’s Black players were subjected to torrents of racial epithets on social media for missing penalty kicks in the final game’s decisive shootout. Prince William condemned the hate, and the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, threatened regulation and fines for companies that continued to permit racist abuse. Inside Facebook, the incident was escalated to a “Site Event 1,” the equivalent of a companywide five-alarm fire.Jadon Sancho, who missed a penalty kick during England’s loss in the European Championship final last month, was embraced by the team’s manager, Gareth Southgate.Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsYet as the Premier League, England’s top division, opens its season on Friday, soccer officials said that the social media companies — especially Facebook, the largest — hadn’t taken the issue seriously enough and that players were again steeling themselves for online hate.“Football is a growing global market that includes clubs, brands, sponsors and fans who are all tired of the obvious lack of desire from the tech giants to develop in-platform solutions for the issues we are dealing with daily,” said Simone Pound, head of equality, diversity and inclusion for the Professional Footballers’ Association, the players’ union.The impasse with English soccer is another instance of Facebook’s failing to solve speech problems on its platform, even after it was made aware of the level of abuse. While Facebook has introduced some measures to mitigate the harassment, soccer officials said they were insufficient.Social media companies aren’t doing enough “because the pain hasn’t become enough for them,” said Sanjay Bhandari, the chair of Kick It Out, an organization that supports equality in soccer.This season, Facebook is trying again. Its Instagram photo-sharing app rolled out new features on Wednesday to make racist material harder to view, according to a blog post. Among them, one will let users hide potentially harassing comments and messages from accounts that either don’t follow or recently followed them.“The unfortunate reality is that tackling racism on social media, much like tackling racism in society, is complex,” Karina Newton, Instagram’s global head of public policy, said in a statement. “We’ve made important strides, many of which have been driven by our discussions with groups being targeted with abuse, like the U.K. football community.”But Facebook executives also privately acknowledge that racist speech against English soccer players is likely to continue. “No one thing will fix this challenge overnight,” Steve Hatch, Facebook’s director for Britain and Ireland, wrote last month in an internal note that The Times reviewed.Some players appear resigned to the abuse. Four days after the European Championship final, Bukayo Saka, 19, one of the Black players who missed penalty kicks for England, posted on Twitter and Instagram that the “powerful platforms are not doing enough to stop these messages” and called it a “sad reality.”Around the same time, Facebook employees continued to report hateful comments to their employer on Mr. Saka’s posts in an effort to get them taken down. One that was reported — an Instagram comment that read, “Bro stay in Africa” — apparently did not violate the platform’s rules, according to the automated moderation system. It stayed up.#EnoughMuch of the racist abuse in English soccer has been directed at Black superstars in the Premier League, such as Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford. About 30 percent of players in the Premier League are Black, Mr. Bhandari said.Over time, these players have been harassed at soccer stadiums and on Facebook, where users are asked to provide their real names, and on Instagram and Twitter, which allows users to be anonymous. In April 2019, fed up with the behavior, some players and two former captains of the national team, David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, took part in a 24-hour social media boycott, posting red badges on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #Enough.A month later, English soccer officials held their first meeting with Facebook — and came away disappointed. Facebook said that “feedback from the meeting was taken on board and influenced further policy, product and enforcement efforts.”Tensions ratcheted up last year after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. When the Premier League restarted in June 2020 after a 100-day coronavirus hiatus, athletes from all 20 clubs began each match by taking a knee. Players continued the symbolic act last season and said they would also kneel this season.That has stoked more online abuse. In January, Mr. Rashford used Twitter to call out “humanity and social media at its worst” for the bigoted messages he had received. Two of his Manchester United teammates, who are also Black, were targeted on Instagram with monkey emojis — which are meant to dehumanize — after a loss.Inside Facebook, employees took note of the surge in racist speech. In one internal forum meant for flagging negative press to the communications department, one employee started cataloging articles about English soccer players who had been abused on Facebook’s platforms. By February, the list had grown to about 20 different news clips in a single month, according to a company document seen by The Times.Marcus Rashford kneeling in support of the Black Lives Matter movement before a Manchester United match in March.Pool photo by Peter PowellEnglish soccer organizations continued meeting with Facebook. This year, organizers also brought Twitter into the conversations, forming what became known as the Online Hate Working Group.But soccer officials grew frustrated at the lack of progress, they said. There was no indication that Facebook’s and Twitter’s top leaders were aware of the abuse, said Edleen John, who heads international relations and corporate affairs for the Football Association, England’s governing body for the sport. She and others began discussing writing an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, the chief executives of Facebook and Twitter.“Why don’t we try to communicate and get meetings with individuals right at the top of the organization and see if that will make change?” Ms. John said in an interview, explaining the thinking.In February, the chief executives of the Premier League, the Football Association and other groups published a 580-word letter to Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Dorsey accusing them of “inaction” against racial abuse. They demanded that the companies block racist and discriminatory content before it was sent or posted. They also pushed for user identity verification so offenders could be rooted out.But, Ms. John said, “we didn’t get a response” from Mr. Zuckerberg or Mr. Dorsey. In April, English soccer organizations, players and brands held a four-day boycott of social media.Twitter, which declined to comment, said in a blog post about racism on Tuesday that it had been “appalled by those who targeted players from the England football team with racist abuse following the Euro 2020 Final.”Messages of support adorning a mural of Mr. Rashford that was defaced after Italy defeated England for the European championship.Lindsey Parnaby/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt Facebook, members of the policy team, which sets the rules around what content stays up or comes down, pushed back against the demands from soccer officials, three people with knowledge of the conversations said.They argued that terms or symbols used for racist abuse — such as a monkey emoji — could have different meanings depending on the context and should not be banned completely. Identity verification could also undermine anonymity on Instagram and create new problems for users, they argued.In April, Facebook announced a privacy setting called Hidden Words to automatically filter out messages and comments containing offensive words, phrases and emojis. Those comments cannot then be easily seen by the account user and will be hidden from those who follow the account. A month later, Instagram also began a test that allowed a slice of its users in the United States, South Africa, Brazil, Australia and Britain to flag “racist language or activity,” according to documents reviewed by The Times.The test generated hundreds of reports. One internal spreadsheet outlining the results included a tab titled “Dehumanization_Monkey/Primate.” It had more than 30 examples of comments using bigoted terms and emojis of monkeys, gorillas and bananas in connection with Black people.‘The Onus Is on Them’In the hours after England lost the European Championship final to Italy on July 11, racist comments against the players who missed penalty kicks — Mr. Saka, Mr. Rashford and Jadon Sancho — escalated. That set off a “site event” at Facebook, eventually triggering the kind of emergency associated with a major system outage of the site.Facebook employees rushed to internal forums to say they had reported monkey emojis or other degrading stereotypes. Some workers asked if they could volunteer to help sort through content or moderate comments for high-profile accounts.“We get this stream of utter bile every match, and it’s even worse when someone black misses,” one employee wrote on an internal forum.Gianluigi Donnarumma of Italy stopping Mr. Sancho’s penalty kick. England missed three of five penalty kicks, giving Italy the victory after play ended with the score tied.Laurence Griffiths/Getty ImagesBut the employees’ reports of racist speech were often met with automated messages saying the posts did not violate the company’s guidelines. Executives also provided talking points to employees that said Facebook had worked “swiftly to remove comments and accounts directing abuse at England’s footballers.”In one internal comment, Jerry Newman, Facebook’s director of sports partnerships for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, reminded workers that the company had introduced the Hidden Words feature so users could filter out offensive words or symbols. It was the players’ responsibility to use the feature, he wrote.“Ultimately the onus is on them to go into Instagram and input which emojis/words they don’t want to feature,” Mr. Newman said. Other Facebook executives said monkey emojis were not typically used negatively. If the company filtered certain terms out for everyone, they added, people might miss important messages.Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s chief executive, later said the platform could have done better, tweeting in response to a BBC reporter that the app “mistakenly” marked some of the racist comments as “benign.”Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, told the BBC that the app had “mistakenly” marked some racist comments as “benign.”Ricky Rhodes for The New York TimesBut Facebook also defended itself in a blog post. The company said it had removed 25 million pieces of hate content in the first three months of the year, while Instagram took down 6.3 million pieces, or 93 percent before a user reported it.Kelly Hogarth, who helps manage Mr. Rashford’s off-field activities, said he had no plans to leave social media, which serves as an important channel to fans. Still, she questioned how much of the burden should be on athletes to monitor abuse.“At what point does responsibility come off the player?” she wondered. She added, “I wouldn’t be under any illusions we will be in exactly the same place, having exactly the same conversation next season.” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      England’s Bukayo Saka Urges Facebook and Twitter to Crack Down on Abuse

      by

      After facing a torrent of racist abuse online, Bukayo Saka said he didn’t want anyone to deal with such “hateful and hurtful messages.”After Bukayo Saka missed a penalty kick for England’s national team on Sunday in the final of the European soccer championship, he and several teammates were overwhelmed by a wave of racist abuse.On Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, people posted monkey emojis and racist epithets to insult Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, all Black players who missed their penalty kicks in the shootout against rival Italy. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Prince William and others swiftly denounced the ugly eruption of racist commentary, especially against a team that had come to symbolize England’s racial diversity.On Thursday, Saka, 19, spoke out for the first time since Sunday’s final. In a statement on Twitter, he condemned the online bigotry he and his fellow players have faced. After saying how disappointed and sorry he was with the loss, Saka took aim at Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, urging them to do more to crack down on the abuse.“To the social media platforms Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, I don’t want any child or adult to have to receive the hateful and hurtful messages that me, Marcus and Jadon have received this week,” Saka wrote. “I knew instantly the kind of hate that I was about to receive and that is a sad reality that your powerful platforms are not doing enough to stop these messages.”Saka’s comments added to growing calls for the platforms to take action against hate speech.On Wednesday, Mr. Johnson said he had warned representatives from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Snapchat that they would face fines under Britain’s planned online safety legislation if they failed to remove hate speech and racism from their platforms.England’s Football Association also released a statement, saying that “social media companies need to step up and take accountability and action to ban abusers from their platforms, gather evidence that can lead to prosecution and support making the platforms free from this type of abhorrent abuse.”Facebook, which owns Instagram, said it was removing comments and accounts that had directed abuse at England’s team and was providing information to law enforcement authorities. Four people have been arrested over online racist attacks aimed at England’s players, the British police said on Thursday.Twitter said it had removed more than 1,000 tweets and permanently suspended “a number of accounts” for violating its rules.Facebook and Twitter have long had trouble grappling with hate speech on their platforms. Last year, during the Black Lives Matter movement and just months before the presidential election, civil rights groups called on advertisers to boycott Facebook if it did not do more to tackle toxic speech and misinformation on its site.The issue became especially heated last year ahead of the presidential election, when President Donald J. Trump spread falsehoods about voting and made veiled threats against lawmakers. In January, after a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, Twitter and Facebook barred Mr. Trump from their platforms for speech that they said had the potential of inciting more violence. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      The Gambling Company That Had the Best Pandemic Ever

      by

      LONDON — At no point during the soccer game between Stoke City and visiting Watford did anyone say, “Tonight’s match is brought to you by bet365,” one of the world’s largest online gambling companies. No one needed to. It was pretty obvious.The game took place at bet365 Stadium, where “bet365” was stenciled across a huge swath of red seats, which were empty because of the pandemic. LED banner ads with the green-and-yellow bet365 logo blinked and rolled around the perimeter of the field throughout play. And every Stoke player had bet365’s insignia emblazoned on the front of his shirt. The company doesn’t just sponsor the team. The company owns it.“We’ve been stuttering a bit,” Peter Coates, who is chairman of both bet365 and Stoke City, said in a phone interview a few hours before the January game. “We need a win tonight.”He didn’t get one. Watford prevailed, 2-1, after more than 90 minutes of sporadically exciting play.Bet365 undoubtedly had a much better night.Bet365, in Stoke-on-Trent, England, thrives in a nation that loosely regulates online gambling.Nathan Stirk/Getty ImagesThe company is private and doesn’t report quarterly earnings. But publicly traded rivals have announced results, and they strongly suggest that gambling operators are one of the big winners in the pandemic economy. The gaming giant Flutter Entertainment announced in November that sports betting revenue rose more than 30 percent last summer from the previous summer. The average daily number of gamblers at all of the company’s chains rose 40 percent.In soccer-crazed England, gambling is one of the few legally available thrills for a nation that is bored, isolated and stuck at home. It’s the British answer to day trading in the U.S. stock market, which has boomed throughout the pandemic and is expected to rise again as a new round of stimulus checks arrives. With an efficiency that seems both grim and arbitrary, Covid-19 has struck down millions but left others unscathed and, in some cases, richer than ever.The latter group includes executives at a select group of companies in a variety of fields including e-commerce, like Amazon, and entertainment, like Netflix. Gambling has a singular distinction in this rarefied class. Much of its gains come directly from people in financial duress — and much of that duress has been caused by gambling.The Gordon Moody Association, a British charity offering residential treatment for gambling addicts, said over the summer that the number of calls from gamblers who said they felt suicidal had recently quadrupled. A House of Lords report found last year that 60 percent of the industry’s profits came from 5 percent of its customers — namely problem gamblers, or gamblers at risk of developing a problem.People like Lewis, a 25-year-old from Hampshire who requested anonymity because few people know about a compulsion he is still struggling to control. He won about $77,000 at age 16 with an online betting account and chased the high of that original hit for years. Since 2016, he said, he has toggled between total abstinence and flat-out mania.To him, bet365 is the most insidious of the many online gambling sites, because it outpaces the rest at catering to the always-on impulse of people who want to wager, day and night, on games happening anywhere in the world.“A gambler is desperate to distract himself, and during lockdown there was nothing to distract me,” he said. “Can’t meet your mates at a pub, can’t go out for a meal. You’re at home every waking second. You end up in a vicious cycle.”A character out of John le CarréDenise Coates, who runs bet365, earned more than $420 million in 2019, the company reported.Felix Clay/EyevineThe online gambling industry has long operated under exceptionally lenient rules in Britain, many of them codified in 2005, with a set of regulations that was largely designed for retail betting shops. It has been described as an analog law for a digital age, and it’s overseen by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, also known as “the Ministry of Fun.”By all accounts, no company has profited more under this light-handed regime than bet365. Which is why it is spectacularly profitable.In 2019, the company stated in an annual filing that Mr. Coates’s daughter, Denise Coates, the co-chief executive, had earned more than $420 million, making her the highest-paid executive in the country and the “highest-paid woman in the world,” according to The Guardian. That was many times more than the chief executives of publicly traded competitors and more than 12,000 times the average salary in Stoke-on-Trent, the struggling city, 140 miles north of London, where bet365 is based.The company floundered last year during the months when soccer games were suspended in Britain, Mr. Coates said. Bet365 leaned on its casino offerings and found some soccer games in Belarus and Australia. Revenue snapped back quickly when play resumed.Ms. Coates, 53, rarely gives interviews and did not respond to messages for this article. She has been described as intensely private, and even to some longtime rivals — the sort of people she might run into at conventions or associations — she remains elusive.“She’s like a character out of a John le Carré novel, a person you know exists but whom you never meet,” said Ralph Topping, a former chief executive of William Hill, one of the country’s largest betting companies. “When I was at William Hill, we would have liked to have had her input on matters important to the industry. I’ve never had a conversation with her.”Ms. Coates’s journey to the pinnacle of online gambling started after she graduated with an honors degree in econometrics from the University of Sheffield and joined her father’s catering business as an accountant. Mr. Coates then owned a few dozen retail gambling shops, essentially a side business at the time.“She said, ‘Dad, that’s the most boring thing I’ve ever done,’” Mr. Coates recalled. “She said, ‘I want to run those shops for you,’ and she was brilliant at it.”She spruced up the stores and added 15 more. In 2000, she bought the domain name bet365 from eBay.“She’s very driven, always likes to be better than anyone else,” Mr. Coates said. “Very organized, good with people. She turned out to be a bit of a star.”Offering wagers all game longA Stoke City match against Leicester at bet365 Stadium. “In-play betting” lets bettors place wagers throughout a game.Getty ImagesThe world that her father credits Ms. Coates with creating is reflected in a television ad for bet365 that ran before the Stoke-Watford game. It featured the actor turned pitchman Ray Winstone, who sat in the back of a luxury sedan, dressed in a dark suit, idling in traffic and exuding ease and control.“At bet365 we’re always innovating and creating,” he said in a Cockney accent, staring at the camera. Cellphone in hand, apparently ready to place some wagers, he ticked through a list of those innovations, including something called “in-play betting.”In-play betting allows customers to wager throughout a sporting event, on minutiae that has little bearing on the outcome. How many corner kicks will there be in the first half of a soccer game? How many players will be ejected? What will happen first during a 10-minute increment — a throw-in, a free kick, a goal kick, something else? When those minutes expire, the site takes wagers on the next 10.“It’s very much like being in a casino,” said Jake Thomas, a former gambling industry executive who chaperoned a reporter, over the phone, through the website during the Stoke-Watford game. “Why wait 90 minutes to find out if your team is going to win? Why not get a little buzz betting on the next corner kick?”As Mr. Thomas spoke, and the minutes ticked by, the odds of dozens of wagers were constantly repriced. A bet that Stoke would score in the first 30 minutes paid 9 to 1 at just over 25 minutes into the game. A moment later, as that outcome appeared fractionally less likely, the same bet paid 19 to 2.The company has said it takes action on 100,000 events throughout the year, on sports and races around the world — greyhounds in New Zealand, women’s table tennis in Ukraine, golf in Dubai. There’s even a section on politics. (George Clooney is currently 100 to 1 to win the American presidency in 2024.)If no live events appeal, virtual events beckon. These are video-generated simulations of tennis matches; games of football, soccer, basketball and cricket; and on and on. One afternoon, bicycle races in a virtual velodrome were running every three minutes, each lasting about a minute.James Grimes, the founder of an antigambling group, and an ad for the gambling app Paddy Power in Manchester.Andy Haslam for The New York TimesOther gambling operators now offer just about everything found on bet365’s site. But rivals say Ms. Coates and her team led the way.“We were always looking at them to see what they were doing and how they were doing it,” said Peter Nolan, a former group director at William Hill. “And to the extent we could, we competed with them.”Because of that competition, fans 40 and younger grew up inundated with gambling ads. The subtext, and sometimes the text, was that soccer and betting don’t merely go together — they enhance each other.“I trusted the messages that football sent me,” said James Grimes, who lost $140,000, two jobs and all of his friends before he quit gambling and founded the Big Step, an antigambling group. “A slogan that I heard a lot as a kid” — from Sky Bet, an online gambling company — “was ‘It matters more when there’s money on it.’ And I believed that.”A tight-lipped companyPeter Coates, left, the chairman of bet365, at a soccer match in Stoke-on-Trent, where the company is the largest single employer.Nick Potts/PA Images, via Getty ImagesStoke-on-Trent is well known for ceramics — it’s where the reality fare “The Great Pottery Showdown” is filmed — but today, with a payroll of more than 4,000, it’s bet365 and not Wedgewood that is the city’s largest single employer. Few employees, even those who have been around for years, have met Ms. Coates. Her reticence is embodied in the company’s approach to the news media. It doesn’t have a press office, and no one responded to messages left with customer service representatives, even to say, “No comment.”Instead, after giving an impromptu phone interview, Peter Coates called to say he would forward any questions to relevant people at bet365. He added, good-naturedly, that speaking to this reporter had landed him in “some trouble.”The origins of bet365 start with Mr. Coates, a Stoke-on-Trent native and son of a coal miner. With money he had earned through a business selling food at stadiums across the country, he bought three local betting shops, essentially as a favor to the brother of an employee. The chain would eventually expand to 35 shops, stretching from the West Midlands to Liverpool.Two decades ago, after getting online at Ms. Coates’s urging, the company operated out of a portable cabin near one of the betting shops. It was a more complicated and expensive proposition than the family had initially realized.“We had to find about 20 million pounds,” Mr. Coates said. “In the early days, we lost a lot of money. They were worrying times, but I felt we were accumulating a customer base, and we eventually passed the critical mass you need.”The last time the company filed a financial report, in December 2019, it stated that operating profit had jumped 15 percent from the previous year, to roughly $1 billion. This capped an immensely lucrative period for Ms. Coates. Forbes recently estimated her net worth at $6.4 billion. For the second year in a row, the Coates family is the United Kingdom’s biggest taxpayer, according to the annual Sunday Times Tax List, published in late January. The family paid the equivalent of $785 million into state coffers last year. Ms. Coates has also set up the Denise Coates Foundation, which focuses on health care and research and charity and in its most recent filing reported $14 million in giving.More quietly, she has been buying hundreds of acres in nearby Cheshire and building what The Daily Mail called a $125 million “glass palace,” along with stables, a tennis court and a 75,000-square-foot artificial lake.In Stoke, Ms. Coates is both acclaimed and largely invisible. She can be counted on to chip in money for civic projects, as she did when the town needed additional funds to erect a statue for Arnold Bennett, a local author who died 90 years ago. Just don’t expect her to show up at the unveiling.“A lot of people who have made money in Stoke leave,” said Fred Hughes, 80, a retired police officer who attended the Bennett statue ceremony. “This is quite an impoverished area, and it’s always looking for outside investment. The Coates family is the exception.”Winners not always welcomeMark Palios, owner of the Tranmere Rovers in Birkenhead, has spoken out against gambling operators as a malign force in the game.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesThe success of bet365 stems in large part from the way it pampers bettors. It offers, for instance, refunds to anyone who bets on a soccer team to win in a game that ends without any goals. (Nil-nil ties enrage bettors.) And in certain circumstances, the company will pay out winners before a game is over.This is not exactly altruism.“The logic from their point of view is that if you’ve got your winnings before the game is over, you can use that money to bet again,” said Warwick Bartlett of Global Betting & Gaming Consultants.The company is far less hospitable to another type of customer: consistent winners. Brian Chappell said he had a falling out with bet365 a few years ago after earning about $4,800 over a summer of gambling on horses. A retired health care researcher, Mr. Chappell said he simply studied the sport and understood the complexities of hedging well enough to come out ahead on weekly races.“Then one Saturday I went to place a bet and the most I could wager was £1.60,” or about $2.20, he said. “They don’t tell you it’s going to happen — there’s no interaction at all. Just one day, your bet is restricted.”After learning that others had encountered similar obstacles, at bet365 and other operators, Mr. Chappell founded Justice for Punters — “punter” is slang for bettor — to fight back.“I call it the ‘ban or bankrupt’ strategy,” he said, describing what he calls an “amazing” business model: “If you’re any good, you get banned. If you’re useless, you get a V.I.P. manager who will keep you gambling.”Antigambling activists contend that such stratagems are just part of the problem, especially during the pandemic.“The lockdowns have accelerated the growth of online gambling and increased the use of more addictive gambling products,” said Matt Zarb-Cousin, who runs Clean Up Gambling, a nonprofit. “This means an entire generation is now far more vulnerable to gambling addiction.”Without new regulations, separating soccer and gambling will never happen, Mr. Zarb-Cousin and others say, because the two are now essentially fused. About 70 percent of teams in the top two English leagues earn millions by wearing betting company logos on their uniforms. Even the few soccer team owners who refuse gambling money, on principle, end up taking it just by competing.Mark Palios, owner of the Tranmere Rovers in Birkenhead has spoken out against gambling operators as a malign force in the game. He was appalled two seasons ago when bet365 wound up with broadcasting rights to some games. The Football Association, which markets those rights, shares revenue with teams in the league.“And bet365 decided that if you wanted to watch games you needed to go to the company’s website and sign up for an account,” Mr. Palios said. “The company was nakedly leveraging its market power to compel people to gamble. I thought that was obscene.” More