But earlier, I was surprised when I opened the app to gamble because it now required me to take a selfie before proceeding. I’m thinking this might be part of the government’s move to ensure minors can’t gamble. Do you think this is a good first step?
Yep, it is surprising that we must take a selfie to access the apps. It is like a kind of KYC, it identifies the user of the apps. Sure, it isn't a good move, how can they bother people's privacy in gambling. By the way, which apps that requires a selfie procedure? Does it apply on all gambling apps? 
at least it allows governments to do something between “do nothing” and “ban everything”.
Even if governments ban it, we actually can gamble through online casinos. We can use VPN and choose the casinos that allow VPN to access their sites.this selfie could be used to determine that you are over a certain age or that you are not using a fake id, that makes sense so far. but it is hard to really restrict or ban things in a virtual environment. if what is wanted is just a selfie photo, i think this can be easily overcome using artificial intelligence, deepfake or photoshop.
How do you know it? How if they apply selfie for another purpose?Sure, selfie sometimes is a part of KYC procedure. There should be data following the selfie, too. TBH, it is hard to accept that we must take a certain KYC procedure to access gambling sites. Don't we support the idea of keeping privacy? By the way, I think someone also can use AI selfie. I doubt it can overcome the AI case.