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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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Parenting" is a nebulous concept and at least to me, it also includes pushing for better laws for children. Nobody would think it's reasonable to allow stores to sell cigarettes to children and tell parents "if you don't like it, just don't let your kids smoke".

Nicotine is probably the worst example possible to argue that laws prevent children from using and becoming addicted to something.

Why is it the worst example? Sure, the laws don't 100% prevent children from smoking, but certainly they have an effect. I'm not using it as an example of a perfectly effective law, I'm using it to make the point that it wouldn't be reasonable to say "parenting is the only defense against smoking" and scrap the law.

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

#332
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You're going to get demolished if you start bouncing gambling debt on a credit card.

If you do not have assets or high income, you can just ignore debt and it will drop off you credit report after 7 years. They can try to sue you (unlikely for Overall much better options that kneecaps.

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

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. This is some quality sv psychosis content. But ok, let’s follow your thought process. Couldn’t someone place a bet on a sporting event and then murder a key player? Wouldn’t all the same laws be triggered? Laws against criminal activity aren’t regulations. Regulations are limitations and oversight requirements on business activities.

>" can someone place a bet on an event that X person will be shot? " > Couldn’t someone place a bet on a sporting event and then murder a key player? I don't follow, these are separate hypotheticals. For the record the answers would be: 1a) Can? Yes 1b) Legal? No, listing itself against public policy. 2a) Can? Yes 2b) Legal? No, murder is illegal 2c) Wager profits retained? No, slayer rule/No profit theory.

Re: 1b “public policy” is not law, so no it’s not “illegal” just against the betting site rules. Easily skirted by making the bet not directly about death, e.g. https://polymarket.com/event/trump-out-as-president-before-2...

Re: 2c also applies to scenario 1, if you get caught you can’t retain the money.

So, to your point about which is more regulated - there is no difference in the amount of regulation between the two scenarios.

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

#334
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Loan sharks that use threats still exist, non-bank personal lending funds use cold calling and connections with bankers and use non-staff third party callers to distance themselves from the consequences and reputation of threatening with violence. So it's not like people need to go to shady lenders in the first place, they can be pipelined from normal credit card debt into less scrupulous debt collectors. https://www…

Does cold calling still works? I get so many spam calls that unknown numbers just go directly to voicemail that I check every other week or so. Pretty much everyone around me does the same. I do not remember when I got last legitimate call - it's all spam now.

The link you have is about business debt - that's likely much more collectable than CC debt.

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

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. This is some quality sv psychosis content. But ok, let’s follow your thought process. Couldn’t someone place a bet on a sporting event and then murder a key player? Wouldn’t all the same laws be triggered? Laws against criminal activity aren’t regulations. Regulations are limitations and oversight requirements on business activities.

> Couldn’t someone place a bet on a sporting event and then murder a key player? Probably not, no. I would be very surprised if the sports betting shops didn't have some sort of "force majeure" clauses.

That seems like a good safeguard.

I don’t see any force majeure clauses here https://polymarket.com/event/trump-out-as-president-before-2... but maybe they’re hidden in the fine print?

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percent of ID verifications do you think are from stolen wallets / purses?

Once information stolen its easy to produce a digital fake ID with the info thats sold on the dark web and used everywhere. Private KYC collecting merchants rarely have the ability to authenticate the full gamet of valid types of government IDs.

Contrary to incredibly popular belief (at least in the US), asking for a photo of somebody's ID is actually not a sane way to do KYC. The point of an identity document is to check its security elements in person and compare the photo to the person standing in front of you. (Part of this can be replicated by doing a live video call, but that window is quickly closing due to deepfakes.)

Yet countless times in the past years, US and a few other companies have asked me to "identify myself" by sending them a scan of my goverment ID via chat/email/web form attachment, with absolutely no liveness check. This is just insane.

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

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They allow instant deposits with credit card This is my biggest takeaway, and I really wonder what payment processor(s) they're using, because the chargeback and fraud rate in filling 'real money' into an online gambling account using visa or mastercard must be through the roof. Exactly same reason why porn sites use their own specialist payment processors (alluded to in popular fiction in Industry season 4 recentl…

I wonder what the chargeback and fraud rate actually is in practice given they do ID verification. Pretty difficult to claim you didn't make the purchase depending on what they collect.

Having verified somebody's government ID doesn't actually factor into chargeback decisions and outcomes, not least because many forms of online KYC practiced today in the US are pretty laughable from a security point of view.

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

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need Colossus-level compute or a genius-level IQ to evaluate the question "Will the steam machine cost more than $700 at release", or "Will 2026 be the hottest year on record".

You are not evaluating those questions, you are evaluating the probability of that two things happening, and you need to evaluate it better than the other people to win. There are no easy questions, the difficulty is set by the skill/investment level of your competition.

I'm confused by how you're modeling these markets.

Let's say I am quite sure that the Steam Machine will cost more than $700 dollars, and I buy a 'yes' lot for 65 cents on the payed-out dollar, those are the odds at my buy-in time.

Where exactly now do the other participants' bets on the same market influence my chance to win/lose? How am I up against them and not the question "will my prediction come true"?

Sure, before my buy-in the odds, and thus the value fluctuate on account of the market movements, but once I'm in I'm in?

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They allow instant deposits with credit card This is my biggest takeaway, and I really wonder what payment processor(s) they're using, because the chargeback and fraud rate in filling 'real money' into an online gambling account using visa or mastercard must be through the roof. Exactly same reason why porn sites use their own specialist payment processors (alluded to in popular fiction in Industry season 4 recentl…

I'm assuming they pay high percentages to processors on deposits to cover the losses. Then they recoup that (and more) in withdrawal fees

[deleted]

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

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need Colossus-level compute or a genius-level IQ to evaluate the question "Will the steam machine cost more than $700 at release", or "Will 2026 be the hottest year on record".

Sure but that level of confidence is what would also eventually wipe you out because gamblers are not necessarily known for proper risk management. You could win 10 bets in a row but then it would only take one bet that you had 100% conviction on for you to lose and you get wiped out

You're sneaking in a prior assumption that people will act stupidly, and then make the argument "Well since they act stupidly they will have bad outcomes". That's like me claiming "Your startup is gonna fail, I can tell, because you'd need to be able to read and write to make it in business!"(sneaking in the prior assumption that the person in question is not in fact able to read or write)

Your strategic consideration is wise, though. 'Diversification' is one of the first things people will teach wrt investment literacy.

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