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Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

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Re: Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

#71
post #57
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we've had to ask you many times not to. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. (p.s. Just to pre-empt the usual: no, this i…

This comment was unnecessary and very distracting from a far more interesting discussion in the replies to the commenter you are attempting to condescend.

dang is the moderator

Re: Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

#72
post #12

I finally gave in to my curiosity and downloaded Kalshi last week to place a few bets on the World Cup. I was blown away how easy it was. I placed a bet with real money within 5 minutes of downloading the app. They allow instant deposits with credit card, and ID verification was real time. I can’t imagine that the extreme accessibility and the typical dark patterns deployed by every popular app won’t eventually end b…

The U.S. is quite far behind the rest of the world on sports betting, which means you don’t even need to imagine, we know from other countries that it doesn’t end well. The most worrying aspect is, the current U.S. government has no interest in the regulations that have helped minimise the problems in other countries.

The U.K’s highest earner for a few years running was the founder of a U.K. betting site, she had something like a 500 million salary and there is an entire town’s economy supported by her business.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bet365

Re: Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

#73

Is this fraud?

Would it matter if the bets were real and they picked the 0.00001% big winners to feature in the ad? Would that be less fraudulent in any meaningful sense, would it have a different impact on the world? Is the real crime here that they were too lazy to lie with selective facts?

In the US, the FTC is very clear that faking or purchasing testimonials is illegal. Fabricating, purchasing, or misrepresenting customer experience is deceptive advertising and is a form of fraud. On the other hand, selecting and advertising specific real testimonials is fine. A customer described their actual experience that way, and presumably the consumers understand that advertisers will select especially positive individual testimonials for their advertisements. I can't believe I'm actually trying to explain this, but fake testimonials are illegal because the consumer has no way to know that they are made up. Real testimonials are not "lying with statistics", they're not statistics at all, and are legal because consumers can understand that it's not the median customer experience.

If picking real winners and real winnings to feature in the ad was just as good, they could do that. If not, then yes, it makes an impact on the world to mislead people with that marketing.

Somehow there's a difference between things that happened and didn't happen, and that's a good place to draw a line in the sand of what you're allowed to advertise and not.

Re: Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

#74
post #30

All these gambling apps need regulation. And I fear they are buying politicians precisely so that doesn't happen. If I were to have my way, I'd put a law in place that limits bets to $5 max and monthly bets to $150 per month. Letting them go higher encourages some of the worst aspects of society. We will see crazy things like athletes being injured or murdered in order to win bets. We are already seeing crazy things…

We should just make gambling illegal online again, things were fine back when you couldn’t gamble online then, at least in the USA, the fucking supreme corpo guzzlers (formerly the Supreme Court) interpreted the laws according to their owners will and now we have gambling online.

The court ruling was a good one, and anticipated. The federal government can either allow all gambling, or ban it all. They can’t pick and choose states where it may be allowed.

Re: Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

#75
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we've had to ask you many times not to. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. (p.s. Just to pre-empt the usual: no, this i…

Usually I agree with your calls on things being unsubstantive, but this one kinda seems fine? I don't think it's flame bait, just emotive language? And the substantive point being made is that online gambling should be illegal. (apologies if arguing about mod decisions is frowned upon, I didn't see anything in the rules about it)

If it were just the one comment I wouldn't have said anything; the issue is the pattern (note the word "repeatedly").

Re: Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the good old days you needed a few more steps before you got into debt after gambling.

Back in the good old days non-payment of gambling debt was a threat to your knee-caps. Today, you might get cut off from Klarna and have to extend your next auto loan to 256 months.

[flagged]

Re: Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

#77
post #12

I finally gave in to my curiosity and downloaded Kalshi last week to place a few bets on the World Cup. I was blown away how easy it was. I placed a bet with real money within 5 minutes of downloading the app. They allow instant deposits with credit card, and ID verification was real time. I can’t imagine that the extreme accessibility and the typical dark patterns deployed by every popular app won’t eventually end b…

How were you able to use a credit card when it's not a payment they accept?

Re: Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the good old days you needed a few more steps before you got into debt after gambling.

Back in the good old days non-payment of gambling debt was a threat to your knee-caps. Today, you might get cut off from Klarna and have to extend your next auto loan to 256 months.

This was with their credit card. You're going to get demolished if you start bouncing gambling debt on a credit card.

I'm guessing that at some point, probably not very long from now, credit cards are going to cut down on this. They don't want to be held responsible for a bunch of debt from gamblers, when they've already paid the sites.

At some point, the fees won't be worth the combination of PR and actually losing money from bankruptcies / delinquencies.

Re: Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

#79
post #66

I have news for you. That burger is the McDonald's commercial? It's most likely made out of plastic. That happy lottery winner? Probably a stock photo from one of the major visuals providers. And I am ready to bet my bankers don't have this hollywood white teeth looking of banks commercials. Since when is advertising real?

“The truth is most of what you see in food photographs is real. FTC laws state that whatever you’re selling with a photo must be real in the image. To use a familiar example, if you’re selling corn flakes the flakes must be real. But then it gets interesting. You can use white glue instead of milk in your bowl of flakes because you’re not selling the milk, only the corn flakes.”

Re: Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

#80

I remember in 2006 when online sports gambling was banned, and witnessed first hand some sleaze bags flee to Costa Rica where many of the actual operations were located. What I witnessed regarding addiction and exploitation put me off sports for a long time. Now here we are, with the tech industry and political capital behind it, this time engineered to engulf the entire population. It's repulsive.

Nobody is forcing anyone to place bets they can't back, isn't this a personal responsibility issue?

edit: to be clear, if companies are committing fraud in their marketing, that should be prosecuted or if regulations around misleading marketing are weak, that should be legislated of course.

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