Issue #5 · April 15, 2026
One week ago I hit send on Issue #4. Since then, we've shipped 90+ commits — and a lot of it is stuff you'll actually see and feel. This issue is heavier on the changelog than usual, because honestly, it was a big week.
Thank you for sticking with us. Growth has been steady, and every new account, every newsletter signup, and every reported bug helps make this thing better.
The Research Page Just Tripled in Size
The Research page exists to make the data around gambling addiction legible to normal people. It got a massive upgrade this week.
- NEW "In the News" section with 14+ articles from NPR, CNN, Washington Post, Fox News, and the NYT — all from 2026. Source-branded cards, fully clickable, paginated so it stays skimmable.
- NEW Podcast library expansion — multi-platform links (Apple Podcasts + Spotify + YouTube) and four new shows added: The 1% in Recovery, Gambling Recovery: Taking Back Your Life, ODAAT Gambling Awareness, and Winning Without Wagers.
- NEW 7 new educational videos in the videos section.
- NEW 5 new peer-reviewed studies from the Journal of Gambling Studies added this week alone. The library keeps growing as new 2025–2026 studies land.
- Redesigned stat boxes, a proper sticky navigation bar across the page, and a clean visual pass on everything.
Original Research: "When the Game Is the Gamble"
We published our first piece of original reporting.
When the Game Is the Gamble looks at KEEP GAMBLING — a $7.77 game on Steam that simulates slot machines, roulette, and sports betting, and has racked up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. No real money changes hands, but every reinforcement mechanism of a real casino is intact, and the audience is young.
The article covers the research on loot boxes (projected to be a $36.2B market by 2032), the clinical literature on gambling simulators as a "gateway," and why the developing prefrontal cortex makes this stuff hit different for people under 26.
A content warning note: the article includes screenshots and discussion of gambling simulators. If that's not something you want in your head today, skip it.
Tell Us What's Broken (Or What Would Make This Better)
One of my favorite things we shipped this week: NEW a bug and idea reporting system, right on the site.
- Two buttons on the homepage: Report a Bug and Share an Idea.
- Every meeting card now has a small "Report inactive" button — if you show up to a meeting and the Zoom link is dead, one click pre-fills a report with the meeting name, day, time, and Zoom ID.
- Optional email field if you want us to follow up — otherwise anonymous.
It's already working: we received four ideas and one inactive-meeting report on day one. If you've been thinking "this one thing would be so much better if..." — that's exactly what these buttons are for. I read every single one.
A Faster, Safer Site
Boring but important: we did a pile of infrastructure work so that the site stays fast even as traffic grows.
- 95% smaller page transfers. Homepage HTML went from ~1.1MB to ~51KB on the wire. On mobile networks that's the difference between "instant" and "uhh".
- Database connection pooling and multi-worker serving so the site doesn't choke when a bunch of you show up at once.
- Security hardening at the edge (via Cloudflare): AI crawler traps, bot protection, rate limiting, blocks for known vulnerability scanners. Basically: the bots trying to scrape or break the site are having a rougher time, and you should notice nothing at all. Which is the goal.
Meeting Cards & Homepage Polish
- NEW Quick Actions bar on the homepage — Crisis Resources, Research, Browse, Add Meeting, Report a Bug, Share an Idea. All one tap away, in a clean 2×3 grid on mobile.
- NEW Visitor counter on the homepage — a small, honest "this week / this month" number so you can see the community is real and growing.
- Meeting cards got a full alignment pass — uniform heights, times and buttons flush across the grid, shield trust icon for GA Sanctioned meetings, and the noisy "Non-GA Sanctioned" badge is gone (it was more confusing than helpful for newcomers).
- Already-passed meetings hide themselves when you filter by today — no more scrolling past meetings you missed.
- Granular clean time on account pages: "3 months + 12 days" instead of just "3 months." The days matter.
What's Next
- More original research articles in the pipeline.
- Continuing to verify and add user-submitted meetings.
- Partnership outreach to treatment facilities and state councils is picking back up this week.
- More peer-reviewed studies landing on the Research page as they're published.
If this newsletter helped you or someone you know, forward it. And if you need a meeting right now, find one here — available 24/7, no signup required.
Got a bug, an idea, or just want to say hello? Use the buttons on the homepage, or email [email protected].
And if you're working on your own research, writing, or lived-experience piece about gambling addiction and recovery — academic, clinical, or personal — we'd love to feature it on the Research page. Same email works.
Have a Good 24.
— gameetingfinder.com