[HN Gopher] Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which ...
___________________________________________________________________
Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes
about gambling
Author : krustyburger
Score : 109 points
Date : 2026-01-18 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.msn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.msn.com)
| uoaei wrote:
| The internet is too connected and communication too instantaneous
| for Polymarket to be anything but a system to be gamed by those
| with money and influence.
|
| Bet appears on Polymarket? You have the ability to direct people
| and resources to enact the under? Congrats you're rich!
| weregiraffe wrote:
| >You have the ability to direct people and resources to enact
| the under? Congrats you're rich!
|
| If you have the ability, you are already rich.
| _bohm wrote:
| Rich people continually attempting to accrue even more money
| is not exactly an unheard-of phenomenon
| uoaei wrote:
| What happens to rich people when they get more money, do you
| think they just stop further attempts at acquiring more?
| goldcd wrote:
| Sometimes they go on a ketamine binge _shrugs_
| lazide wrote:
| Occasionally they make historically bad bets and blow up
| their fortunes, and it gets eaten up it all the smaller
| sharks circling behind them. It used to be most
| billionaires only lasted (as billionaires) for 3-7 years
| before collapsing.
|
| The current stock market insane binge has changed that a
| bit.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Yeah, they historically don't like to keep increasing their
| wealth, Elon musk going from 350bn to nearly 800bn in like 2
| years is definitely not an example of that.
| drob518 wrote:
| The writer obviously hasn't done any deep study of prediction
| markets and why they often provide greater insight than other
| polling techniques. Are they perfect? No. They predicted Hillary
| would win in 2016.
| linhns wrote:
| Had they existed then, prediction markets would have picked
| Hillary to win also
| drob518 wrote:
| They did exist and they did predict Hilary.
| dh2022 wrote:
| You obviously missed the point of the article. The point is
| that validating and advertising Polymarket on national news
| outlets will have ugly consequences.
| bink wrote:
| It's amazing how many people on HN didn't bother to actually
| read the article.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| Why is polymarket any more or less dangerous than NFTs or naked
| option trading?
|
| Fool and his money are quickly separated...
| nemomarx wrote:
| Marketed to a broader audience with more users, like sports
| betting?
|
| And to be fair options trading used to be pretty limited in
| users too, until apps like robinhood tried to democratize it.
| shimman wrote:
| Replace the word "democratize" with "unleash" and that's a
| far more accurate descriptor.
|
| It's not democratic if you can't destroy it, and believe me a
| majority of people want to destroy it.
| chrononaut wrote:
| Naked option trading is certainly the worst of the three from a
| financial risk perspective for the beginner.
|
| Although polymarket would do the best at "attraction" towards
| the average uninformed consumer because the bets and how to
| place them are far more understandable than the various option
| trading strategies.
| bmitc wrote:
| It bother lowers the threshold and increases the breadth of
| things that can be bet in. It's a gambling addiction nightmare.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Exactly! Friction matters a lot.
| dh2022 wrote:
| The article's point was not that Polymarket is the problem-the
| point is validating and advertising Polymarket on national news
| outlets will have ugly consequences.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > the point is validating and advertising Polymarket on
| national news outlets will have ugly consequences.
|
| Coinbase
|
| Robinhood
|
| DraftKings
|
| FanDuel
| Arainach wrote:
| Giving credence and advertisement to all of those has
| caused huge societal problems. Sports Betting is a huge
| problem.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Yes, all of those are equally problematic.
|
| Polymarket here is one example among the companies causing
| the problem. Legislation that addresses the problem should
| affect all the listed companies and more, not just
| Polymarket.
| microtonal wrote:
| Yeah, once it's on television, it is similar to polling,
| which can influence elections because people like to vote for
| the winner. However, in this case it's even worse, because
| someone with deep pockets can influence the predictions.
| dh2022 wrote:
| But polling is still scientific and harder to manipulate
| than the betting markets. All of this is covered in th
| article. You should read it-it is a good article.
| microtonal wrote:
| _harder to manipulate than the betting markets._
|
| Sorry, that was what I meant to imply with the second
| half of my comment. Still, in my country there have been
| debates about whether publishing polls shouldn't be
| forbidden n weeks or days before the election (currently
| publishing polls and campaigning is only forbidden on
| election day).
| stickfigure wrote:
| The solution is baked into the problem. If prediction
| markets become generally embraced by the public
| (mentioning them on CNN is part of that evolution) then
| they will be much harder to manipulate. Size matters.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| because not everyone does naked option trading or nfts... while
| straight up gambling on 50/50 odds is WAY more enticing.
| bshaughn wrote:
| It gives people in power, wether it be the government or even
| an NBA ref, a vehicle to profit off of conflicts of interest /
| fixing games / etc...
|
| Ive seen people point out White House press conferences do
| weird shit, like cut the conference 10 seconds before some
| polymarket prop bet of "how long will this press conference
| be".
|
| Much more heinously, a few months ago right before one of
| Trumps asinine tariff announcements, someone took out a $300M
| BTC short position that was almost certainly from a WH insider.
|
| I honestly don't care if someone loses all their money
| gambling, but the problem I have is how so many institutions
| are able to be undermined at a fundamental level do the
| existence of polymarket.
| b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote:
| >It gives people in power, wether it be the government or
| even an NBA ref, a vehicle to profit off of conflicts of
| interest / fixing games / etc...
|
| there is the stock market for those things, where insider
| trading is nigh invisible to public.
| bshaughn wrote:
| I think you have completey missed my point. The stock
| market only allows you to trade securities, and (in theory)
| there is a lot of regulation and enforcement on who buys /
| sells stocks. Additionally, no one has the power to
| magically set a stock price to be a certain price on a
| certain date.
|
| Polymarket all of a sudden makes it much easier to make
| money betting on an outcome people control. Looking at
| polymarket, I see bets paying 100-1 based on the number of
| tweets Elon makes on a given day. I see another at 100-1 on
| wether the US airstrikes Iran today with $66m riding on it.
| All of a sudden theres an incentive of a life changing
| amount of money for goons in the whitehouse to strike Iran
| for shits and giggles.
|
| Did you know that in 2007 some NBA Refs were caught rigging
| games for just $2000 a game? Now Refs don't even need to be
| payed off when you can make a position anonymously with
| bitcoin.
| b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote:
| >Additionally, no one has the power to magically set a
| stock price to be a certain price on a certain date.
|
| but many have _the knowledge_ of which company or
| industry is about to experience legislation, which they
| can pass to any of their associates worldwide, who can
| then buy or short the affected entities and share the
| profit with the insider. Polymarket is just the idiocracy
| version of that.
| bshaughn wrote:
| I completely agree insider trading is an issue,
| especially with the legality of sitting congressmen being
| able to day trade. But with the exception of elected
| officials voting for bad bills / policies, the "victim"
| is whomever loses money on those trade. Its reactive to
| world events, meaning the world events aren't being
| changed by the insider trader.
|
| Polymarket is worse as it gives a mechanism for
| proactively changing the outcome of events to a much more
| extreme degree, simply because someone can make money on
| it.
|
| A benign version of this would be NFL employees betting
| $1million on the color of gatorade in the Superbowl.
|
| An insane version of this would be Trump issuing a single
| airstrike on Iran after having a friend or family member
| place a $10M bet on polymarket that pays out $1B. It
| completely erodes the obligation our government officials
| have to not act in their self interests.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Zvi Mowshowitz has an excellent article on the devastating
| effects that legalizing sports betting has had:
| https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-online-sports-gambling-exp...
|
| Personally I find it sickening to see ads that say you can get
| rich betting on the weather. I haven't seen ads for polymarket
| but Kalshi's ads are absolutely predatory.
| torginus wrote:
| It's a website where people can make bets on how certain
| geopolitical and public events shake out.
|
| I used to think it's just yet another way to people with more
| money than sense to get their kicks.
|
| But then I saw the true reason why the platform is terrifying -
| it gives people who have nontrivial amounts riding on the line
| a very powerful incentive to influence said events.
|
| I have seen expertly crafted and highly convincing narratives -
| that I know to be false from firsthand experience - spring up
| inside (and presumably outside) the platform spring up on an
| issue. There was the thing where the ISW (a reputable military
| think tank) reported an Ukrainian city was captured (when in
| fact it wasn't) in order to win a bet.
|
| Imagine if next time someone leaks some military intel in order
| to hedge a bet. Money, especially lots of it, is a very
| powerful motivator.
|
| There's also no way to check and control who has insider info
| or has influence on the outcome (as betting against them is
| essentially suicide)
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Because it is gambling.
|
| NFTs have zero value but people seem to derive non-monetary
| value from them. Naked option trading is a form of gambling (as
| well as risk management) and, as a result, it is regulated.
|
| Polymarket is regulated as a "financial investment" for
| regulatory purposes but is gambling, there is no legitimate
| risk management reason. As a result, there is massive scope for
| harm because it is gambling without any of the gambling
| regulations that exist in the US.
|
| People on this site appear to be unaware that gambling is
| regulated where legal. I will give you an example: Polymarket
| do not comply with state regulator's exclusion/no market lists.
| This is immoral. Gambling companies should not take bets from
| users who have gambling problems, they should not market to
| them.
|
| Offshore unregulated books will often market themselves to
| addicts saying that they do not comply with regulator's
| exclusion lists...this is an onshore book operating in
| Lexington Avenue New York, not out of a shed with a pig sty in
| Curaco. It is unbelievable at many levels.
| networkadmin wrote:
| The whole nation is eaten up by gambling and other vices at this
| time. It's not the first time such a thing has happened in a
| nation's history. Generally it occurs just after widespread
| monetary debasement and just before major, world shaking
| disasters. (You Are Here.)
|
| Reference: Andrew Dickson White (first president of Cornell)
| "Fiat Money Inflation In France", published 1896:
|
| "The government now began, and continued by spasms to grind out
| still more paper; commerce was at first stimulated by the
| difference in exchange; but this cause soon ceased to operate,
| and commerce, having been stimulated unhealthfully, wasted away.
|
| Manufactures at first received a great impulse; but, ere long,
| this overproduction and overstimulus proved as fatal to them as
| to commerce. From time to time there was a revival of hope caused
| by an apparent revival of business; but this revival of business
| was at last seen to be caused more and more by the desire of far-
| seeing and cunning men of affairs to exchange paper money for
| objects of permanent value. As to the people at large, the
| classes living on fixed incomes and small salaries felt the
| pressure first, as soon as the purchasing power of their fixed
| incomes was reduced. Soon the great class living on wages felt it
| even more sadly.
|
| Prices of the necessities of life increased: merchants were
| obliged to increase them, not only to cover depreciation of their
| merchandise, but also to cover their risk of loss from
| fluctuation; and, while the prices of products thus rose, wages,
| which had at first gone up under the general stimulus, lagged
| behind. Under the universal doubt and discouragement, commerce
| and manufactures were checked or destroyed. As a consequence the
| demand for labor was diminished; laboring men were thrown out of
| employment, and, under the operation of the simplest law of
| supply and demand, the price of labor--the daily wages of the
| laboring class--went down until, at a time when prices of food,
| clothing and various articles of consumption were enormous, wages
| were nearly as low as at the time preceding the first issue of
| irredeemable currency."
| networkadmin wrote:
| "The mercantile classes at first thought themselves exempt from
| the general misfortune. They were delighted at the apparent
| advance in the value of the goods upon their shelves. But they
| soon found that, as they increased prices to cover the
| inflation of currency and the risk from fluctuation and
| uncertainty, purchases became less in amount and payments less
| sure; a feeling of insecurity spread throughout the country;
| enterprise was deadened and stagnation followed.
|
| New issues of paper were then clamored for as more drams are
| demanded by a drunkard. New issues only increased the evil;
| capitalists were all the more reluctant to embark their money
| on such a sea of doubt. Workmen of all sorts were more and more
| thrown out of employment. Issue after issue of currency came;
| but no relief resulted save a momentary stimulus, which
| aggravated the disease. The most ingenious evasions of natural
| laws in finance which the most subtle theorists could contrive
| were tried--all in vain; the most brilliant substitutes for
| those laws were tried; "self-regulating" schemes,
| "interconverting" schemes--all equally vain. All thoughtful men
| had lost confidence. All men were waiting; stagnation became
| worse and worse. At last came the collapse and then a return,
| by a fearful shock, to a state of things which presented
| something like certainty of remuneration to capital and labor.
| Then, and not till then, came the beginning of a new era of
| prosperity.
|
| Just as dependent on the law of cause and effect was the moral
| development. Out of the inflation of prices grew a speculating
| class; and, in the complete uncertainty as to the future, all
| business became a game of chance, and all business men,
| gamblers. In city centers came a quick growth of stock-jobbers
| and speculators; and these set a debasing fashion in business
| which spread to the remotest parts of the country. Instead of
| satisfaction with legitimate profits, came a passion for
| inordinate gains. Then, too, as values became more and more
| uncertain, there was no longer any motive for care or economy,
| but every motive for immediate expenditure and present
| enjoyment. So came upon the nation the obliteration of thrift."
| networkadmin wrote:
| "In this mania for yielding to present enjoyment rather than
| providing for future comfort were the seeds of new growths of
| wretchedness: luxury, senseless and extravagant, set in:
| this, too, spread as a fashion. To feed it, there came
| cheatery in the nation at large and corruption among
| officials and persons holding trusts. While men set such
| fashions in private and official business, women set fashions
| of extravagance in dress and living that added to the
| incentives to corruption. Faith in moral considerations, or
| even in good impulses, yielded to general distrust. National
| honor was thought a fiction cherished only by hypocrites.
| Patriotism was eaten out by cynicism.
|
| Thus was the history of France logically developed in
| obedience to natural laws; such has, to a greater or less
| degree, always been the result of irredeemable paper, created
| according to the whim or interest of legislative assemblies
| rather than based upon standards of value permanent in their
| nature and agreed upon throughout the entire world. Such, we
| may fairly expect, will always be the result of them until
| the nat of the Almighty shall evolve laws in the universe
| radically different from those which at present obtain.
|
| And, finally, as to the general development of the theory and
| practice which all this history records: my subject has been
| Fiat Money in France; How it came; What it brought; and How
| it ended.
|
| It came by seeking a remedy for a comparatively small evil in
| an evil infinitely more dangerous. To cure a disease
| temporary in its character, a corrosive poison was
| administered, which ate out the vitals of French prosperity.
|
| It progressed according to a law in social physics which we
| may call the "law of accelerating issue and depreciation." It
| was comparatively easy to refrain from the first issue; it
| was exceedingly difficult to refrain from the second; to
| refrain from the third and those following was practically
| impossible.
|
| It brought, as we have seen, commerce and manufactures, the
| mercantile interest, the agricultural interest, to ruin. It
| brought on these the same destruction which would come to a
| Hollander opening the dykes of the sea to irrigate his garden
| in a dry summer. It ended in the complete financial, moral
| and political prostration of France--a prostration from which
| only a Napoleon could raise it."
| microtonal wrote:
| What's the point of posting entire book fragments here?
| networkadmin wrote:
| So that lazy people who form their worldview via a Quick
| Google Search, Wikipedia articles, and/or "news media"
| can actually have a chance to learn something real about
| the time they are living in.
|
| It's like a dozen paragraphs, forming one complete
| argument. Is this too much material to take in all at
| once, in this brave new TLDR tomorrow?
| gilleain wrote:
| Neat in theory, but in practice ineffective. Those who
| might read multiple large exerpts from a book would
| actually seek out the source.
|
| Do as you wish, however I doubt this will have the effect
| you want here.
| wgjordan wrote:
| > It's like a dozen paragraphs, forming one complete
| argument. Is this too much material to take in all at
| once, in this brave new TLDR tomorrow?
|
| The issue is not that you cited a dozen-paragraph
| argument, it's that you inlined all the text directly
| into a series of comments instead of a link to the text
| on a separate page. It visually overwhelms the discussion
| thread and is disruptive to the broader discussion, which
| is not strictly against guidelines but generally seen as
| non-normative behavior.
| pgruenbacher wrote:
| i enjoyed reading it thank you
| dang wrote:
| Please don't make posts consisting of quotes and nothing
| else. HN is a supposed to be a site for curious conversation.
| It's not hard to see how posts like this interrupt that and
| bog it down - imagine someone at a dinner party* reading
| entire paragraphs like this.
|
| (* I don't know why I said "dinner party", since I don't go
| to those, the conversation usually isn't good, and they
| aren't my idea of fun, but oh well, it makes the point)
| aisenik wrote:
| I don't really understand your point. We should reject
| ideas that make us feel like we have to sit through a
| monologue at a dinner party?
| dang wrote:
| We should find more interesting ways to communicate ideas
| than lengthy recitation.
| elphinstone wrote:
| He's writing about Revolutionary France's debasement, but
| Mackay's Extraordinary Delusions documents France's debasement
| under John Law about 70 years earlier, which shows how easily
| such mistakes are repeated.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Isn't Polymarket very low stakes? For example "Will Trump acquire
| Greenland before 2027" market (the main one for this issue) has
| only 14m USD volume. This is like 2 orders of magnitude less
| money than is bet on El Classico 2 times a year.
|
| There are risks connected when prediction markets run wild but
| Polymarket ain't it. There is also utility. It has high
| predictive value (it beats polls for elections from a little
| sample I've looked at) and allows you to make better decisions.
| toss1 wrote:
| It beats polls for elections _ONLY_ until someone notices it is
| being used as the basis of news stories and figures out it will
| be four orders of magnitude cheaper to manipulate that small
| market and make the news idiots broadcast that opinions have
| changed than to actually deploy all the adverts needed to
| change the opinions.
|
| The very low stakes you point out make this even easier to put
| a thumb on the scales.
|
| Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to
| be a good measure"
|
| The point of the article is that as soon as the "news" started
| reporting on prediction markets or corporatized gambling as if
| it was a measure of sentiment, it ceased to become a good
| measurement. That point has long passed.
| bluecalm wrote:
| News already broadcast tons of nonsense. Political commentary
| is just brain rot. Economic commentary might be just as well
| generated by one of those Markov chain string generators - it
| would make as much sense.
|
| >>out it will be four orders of magnitude cheaper to
| manipulate that small market and make the news idiots
| broadcast that opinions have changed than to actually deploy
| all the adverts needed to change the opinions.
|
| It will then become more expensive. Out of all the
| manipulation news and journalists do every day I am not sure
| why "people bet money at 1 to 4 odds that Trump takes
| Greenland before 2027" is particularly problematic. It's true
| people bet money on it at those odds. How is that more
| problematic that news running pro or anti Trump segments or
| broadcasting some random crystal ball readings to justify
| stock price fluctuations of the day? You can see how much
| money is bet on the market as well. It's not like you can
| spend 5 figures and suddenly shape the narrative.
| keiferski wrote:
| I'm increasingly convinced that the single most important concept
| to understand in the 21st century is Chesterton's Fence:
|
| _" Chesterton's fence" is the principle that reforms should not
| be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs
| is understood._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
|
| Gambling isn't a new problem, but apparently we thought it would
| turn out differently this time, for some vague unclear reason.
|
| I think the simplified version of that reason is: no one really
| believes in anything anymore, except in the value that acquiring
| money by any means necessary is a good thing.
| valiant55 wrote:
| The powers that be have always saught wealth. At some point
| they gained enough power to start usurping the law that was
| supposed to keep them in check.
| mcphage wrote:
| We should have made it clearer that monied interests have a
| choice: be kept in check by the law, or by the guillotine.
| master_crab wrote:
| This seems like the contrarian argument to libertarianism. A
| libertarian might claim it is orthogonal to it in theory, but
| in practice it is very much relevant to a "break all the walls
| down" ideology.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Maybe, like myself, you're just aging into being a bit of a
| conservative.
| keiferski wrote:
| Eh, I don't think _not wanting gambling and amoral behavior
| to consume society_ makes me a conservative in any real sense
| of the word. More just common sense pragmatism, is how I'd
| put it.
| protonbob wrote:
| Amoral by what standard? That's where the conservatism
| comes in.
| keiferski wrote:
| Amoral, not immoral.
| kelipso wrote:
| The Chesterton's Fence argument is an argument against
| progressive social changes, no?
| keiferski wrote:
| No, it's an argument against removing rules / making
| changes without deeply understanding why those rules
| exist in the first place, and what might happen when they
| are removed.
|
| It's perfectly fine to be for progressive social changes,
| as long as those criteria are met.
|
| I'd call that a pragmatic approach, not a conservative
| one.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _I'd call that a pragmatic approach, not a conservative
| one._
|
| The other meaning of "conservative", the one that's
| opposite "reckless".
|
| It should in theory be possible to take a conservative
| approach to being progressive.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "It should in theory be possible to take a conservative
| approach to being progressive"
|
| That's likely how most of the middle see themselves (if
| not in those words) - open to new changes but only if
| they're fully understood and not drastic.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| No, sometimes social change is putting up a fence. And if
| social change is sometimes putting up fences, that would
| mean that not all fences are supposed to be torn down.
| kelipso wrote:
| Chesterton's fence has a specific definition. It's not
| supposed to mean restrictions on social conduct or mores
| like you seem to be implying.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Think of it as grift and not gambling.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| Maybe you mean in any modern sense of the word, but I'm
| pretty sure that is indeed a large part of what it used to
| mean.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Sure, but Chesterton's Fence _is_ a pretty foundational
| argument among many conservatives.
|
| Conservatives think societies are hard to understand, which
| makes them hard to engineer, and replacing institutions
| that work with new inventions needs to be done carefully
| and slowly.
| _bohm wrote:
| I think most serious left-wing people also hold a strong
| aversion to gambling on the grounds that it's financially
| exploitative and can be viewed as a regressive tax on the
| poor/uneducated.
| CodingJeebus wrote:
| > Gambling isn't a new problem, but apparently we thought it
| would turn out differently this time, for some vague unclear
| reason.
|
| Moneyed interests saw a business opportunity, simple as that.
| Economic investment is becoming highly concentrated towards
| high-growth, high-risk opportunities and gambling has long
| thrived in the black market while staying current with
| technology.
|
| > except in the value that acquiring money by any means
| necessary is a good thing.
|
| And this will only become more true as the economy continues to
| worsen. Economic downturns and market collapses favor the
| elite.
| andrepd wrote:
| > I think the simplified version of that reason is: no one
| really believes in anything anymore, except in the value that
| acquiring money by any means necessary is a good thing.
|
| Hit the nail on the head and these are my thoughts exactly. I
| don't really want to be the guy that thinks his time is extra-
| ordinary (cue fake quote of Socrates saying "kids these days
| have no manners"), but... maybe it is?
|
| For me it's like people _don 't even feel the need to pretend
| anymore_. Selfish geopolitical calculations and greed have
| dictated all actors' actions in the 20th, that isn't new, but
| at least then there was a _need_ to appear to abide by laws or
| to uphold human rights, even to strive for the eradication of
| war (and often it wasn 't a disguise; people actually cared
| about those things).
|
| States used to care or at least appear to care about progress,
| betterment, social improvement, moral improvement. Today? All
| any government speaks of is raw GDP growth %. And so gambling
| is pushed on TVs, streets, subways, kids' entertainment... The
| idea that a government of a nation would strive for the moral
| well-being of its citizens (by heavily curtailing gambling for
| example) seems positively _quaint_ in 2026.
|
| Anyway I'm tired, excuse the incoherent ramble.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Gambling isn't a new problem, but apparently we thought it
| would turn out differently this time, for some vague unclear
| reason._
|
| The things I've seen have been either "it's not right to tell
| me not to" or "non-participants can get useful information by
| observing the odds". What I _haven 't_ seen is claims that it
| won't be net-harmful to participants.
| jonstewart wrote:
| Doesn't seem like slow-walking so much as a mad-rush. I saw a
| Kalshi ad on tv last night.
| koolba wrote:
| > A billionaire congressional candidate can't just send a check
| to Quinnipiac University and suddenly find himself as the polling
| front-runner, but he can place enormous Polymarket bets on
| himself that move the odds in his favor.
|
| Maybe not with a specific pollster depending on their scruples,
| but you can definitely pay to be part of the poll. And that's the
| first step to getting any stats whatsoever.
| shimman wrote:
| It doesn't really work, up until a few weeks before the NYC
| mayoral election. Polymarket had Andrew Cuomo winning by double
| digits.
|
| It's a trash platform.
| vlark wrote:
| Stop calling them "prediction markets" and start calling them
| what they really are: corporatized bookies.
| mathgeek wrote:
| They're also heavily, heavily fixed of course. There's nothing
| stopping anonymous folks from betting on things they
| control/influence.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| At least in gambling they don't let the sports referees and
| players gamble.
|
| This is just another racket for those in power to continue
| making the world worse for just a little bit more gain for
| themselves.
|
| Edit: Throttled like always, you guys hate me (and reality/law
| in this instance) https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/sports-
| gambling/20-charged-ba...
| bluecalm wrote:
| >>At least in gambling they don't let the sports referees and
| players gamble.
|
| Oh c'mon now. This is completely impossible to police.
| Players and referees are not under constant supervision. They
| have families, friends, partners. Some of them got caught but
| you can be certain most weren't because it's just very
| difficult to catch.
|
| There are always multiple people who know about key players'
| injuries, illness, other factors. The game is negative sum
| and additionally insiders take a a chunk for themselves. It's
| worse then roulette which at least doesn't pretend to be
| fair.
| stickfigure wrote:
| The only material objection mentioned in the article is that
| prediction markets are easy to manipulate.
|
| Well, only if they are thinly traded. If they get mentioned a lot
| more on CNN and CNBC, that is likely to change.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| They really aren't. Every attempt at manipulation just turns
| into easy money for those who predict the right odds.
| etiam wrote:
| That only really holds if reporting on the manipulation bets
| is not turned into effective propaganda for skewing events
| towards the manipulation outcome. So the main argument of the
| article holds IMO.
|
| Edited to add: I'd like to rephrase that a bit actually. It
| doesn't even have to help bring about the particular outcome
| being bet on. It's enough that it can be used to shift public
| opinion in some way that's worth the cost to the manipulator.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Sure, but events where that kind of "skew" is effective are
| going to be quite rare. And even then, the incentive is
| just for everyone to try and "skew" the event as early as
| possible, where factors other than monetary cost or reward
| then become dominant. No different from what usually
| happens with no prediction market at all.
|
| > It's enough that it can be used to shift public opinion
| in some way that's worth the cost to the manipulator.
|
| This has been tried in the real world and is just not very
| effective. It's just too hard to move the price in ways
| that will shift public opinion when literally anyone else
| has a huge incentive to bet against you.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Well, only if they are thinly traded."
|
| Right now, they're all thin traded at their open. As soon as
| they are created is when you see the volatility that makes them
| enticing. Once you get volume, there doesn't seem to be as much
| value to be had.
| cft wrote:
| If insiders trade, the market becomes more accurate, which is
| good for society. Like WikiLeaks. Thus the MSN panic, the legacy
| establishment wants Polymarket to follow Assange's path.
| andrepd wrote:
| Yep, some WH member trading 400k$ an hour before an attack sure
| did wonders for "the good of society". So does media showing
| rates on gambling websites as if they were an oracle and not
| something that can be gamed for cheaper than a TV ad.
|
| For fucks sake...
| toss1 wrote:
| The problem discussed in the article was _NOT_ insiders trading
| on secret information -- it is the nearly opposite problem of
| manipulators trading and skewing the odds.
|
| Insider trading seeks to trade with secret information and
| minimally obvious trades to avoid moving the markets until
| their position is locked in, in order to profit when the
| previously secret information becomes public and the market
| finally moves to a different price level.
|
| Manipulators seek to move the market to create a false
| narrative that market-moving info exists when actual market-
| moving does _NOT_ exist; the expectation is that people will
| see the price change and _ASSUME_ there is information behind
| it, when there is actually just a manipulator willing to lose
| money to create that impression.
|
| In a small market, such manipulation can be more cost-effective
| (make more of an impression for the same cost) vs buying
| advertisements.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| This is a problem, a net negative and a sign of a weakening
| society.
|
| But, one silver lining, maybe, is gamblers are a little less
| likely to fall for fake news. Maybe?
|
| It seems hard to be a climate change denier when you're about to
| gamble on it.
|
| Or maybe people will find a way to gamble while still living in
| completely different reality bubbles. Probably.
|
| If you thought your neighbor was politically extreme last
| election, just wait until next election when he also has $100,000
| on the line...
| sowbug wrote:
| _But, one silver lining, maybe, is gamblers are a little less
| likely to fall for fake news. Maybe?_
|
| Only in a truth-agnostic sense. Good gamblers in player-banked
| games (poker; rock, scissors, paper) vs house-banked games
| (slots) are good at figuring out what the other guy is
| representing. The actual truth is much less significant.
| andrepd wrote:
| > But, one silver lining, maybe, is gamblers are a little less
| likely to fall for fake news. Maybe?
|
| 5 minutes browsing polymarket comments will dispel that notion
| really fast.
| pyrolistical wrote:
| But at least you can make them poorer
| daveguy wrote:
| Or just ignore all that garbage.
| tpm wrote:
| > But, one silver lining, maybe, is gamblers are a little less
| likely to fall for fake news. Maybe?
|
| Long time ago I was working for a betting company and we had a
| product where virtual (horses, dogs, bikes, cars) were racing
| in a virtual environment. This was displayed on a TV in
| physical branches and on the website, along with completely
| transparent information that it is all random, source of
| randomness was even some government audited hardware. The
| customers could place bets on these virtual racers, identified
| by numbers. Essentially if there were 8 'dogs' in a race, there
| was a 1/8 chance your pick would win. And then a new set of
| random numbers would be generated and based on that a new
| 'race' video would play. The 'races' would go on every day, 4
| in hour or something like that.
|
| And the customers (in the live chat or sitting in the physical
| locations) were often debating the form of the individual
| 'dogs', how they would perform in the next race and so on. Yes,
| really.
| reillyse wrote:
| pigeon dancing (ala Skinner). Humans love to ascribe meaning
| to things, we have a real problem with randomness.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| Am I overlooking something, or would that mean it's super
| easy for a rational participant to make money?
| gpm wrote:
| Presumably it's a negative expected value game - the
| company running it has to make money after all... so likely
| not.
| pyrolistical wrote:
| Prediction markets don't need a bookie. Each bet has
| another real person taking the other side.
|
| It's more like the stock market brokerages. They just
| take a fee on each trade and don't need to give you a
| spread over the stock price
| gpm wrote:
| This subthread is not about prediction markets
| pyrolistical wrote:
| Sometimes. Often the sure fire bets have lower returns than
| the expected annual stock market returns.
|
| You have to watch out for resolutions are don't depend on
| the truth or could be abused.
|
| Examples of markets to avoid are those that a single
| individual can manipulate. They could take the most
| profitable side and corrupt the result.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If you thought your neighbor was politically extreme last
| election, just wait until next election when he also has
| $100,000 on the line...
|
| I've seen the comment that prediction markets can be viewed as
| a tool for making conflicts more intractable.
| kledru wrote:
| chaos-for-profit incentive is what terrifies me
| nullc wrote:
| Why is polymarket worse than cell phone games? At least
| polymarket essentially self identifies as gambling and isn't
| specifically marketed to children.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Cell phone games are knowingly losing money for fun. Polymarket
| is a sign of a failing, rapidly deregulatory economy.
|
| And that's before we get into discussing the social damage to
| country that already sees more school shootings than weeks in a
| year (actually, 4x more), with rising political and civil
| tensions including assassinated politicians, adding potential
| "lose your house" to random events. As if it'll help calm
| things down and let us all keep a level head.
|
| Or the implications of news companies reporting on these odds
| as if they reflect _actual statistical likelihood_ , and how
| that gives the ultra wealthy yet another lever to control the
| view of reality the common people have.
| giantg2 wrote:
| What is the legality for US residents?
|
| Right now Polymarket is subject to a federal agreement that they
| don't let US people participate. Apparently this is just a
| checkbox for the user to attest to. They don't even do IP
| geolocation, never mind payment checks.
|
| So it's currently illegal for them to run this in the US. But is
| it illegal for users to participate?
| shimman wrote:
| It's okay, when the next administration enforces the laws we'll
| see all the VC ghouls attack and decry the government for
| having the audacity to protect citizens from abuse.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Text-only, no Javascript:
|
| https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1Upfdb
| abetusk wrote:
| "Why prediction markets aren't popular" [0] gives some compelling
| arguments (to me) about why prediction markets haven't caught on
| and probably never will.
|
| As I understand it, the main argument is that for prediction
| markets that aim to incentivize the thing they're predicting,
| better to invest in the thing directly. Otherwise, "prediction
| markets" are successful precisely when they can't influence the
| outcome, like sports betting.
|
| I remember finding the election betting interesting last
| presidential election, but I also remember that it was spiked
| when Musk invested to change the odds.
|
| [0] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-prediction-markets-
| aren...
| d--b wrote:
| since financial speculation exists, the news has been about
| gambling.
|
| Regular people just didn't know it cause the ticket to entry was
| to expensive.
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