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New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

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Re: New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

#111

Post by swozey »

nightpool wrote: post #100
swozey wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Predication markets are literally causing people to start wildfires across the globe , I thought it was just a USA thing going on, but it's global.

Do you have any sources for this? My understanding is that all of the discussion about prediction market wildfires are completely speculative, nobody has actually started a wildfire for a prediction market payout yet.

I've been in the desert fighting fires for the last 4 months. The news isn't going rampant with the arson stories for reasons (who knows, scaring the public, informing the public, etc).

Open the watchduty app and start looking into how many fires are currently arson suspected/apprehended and how this is the largest national wildfire year we've ever had.

The Dick and Cleetus methheads doing this stuff aren't the brightest and most well informed tech risk takers out there. Most of them will get caught and never get a dime, who the hell knows how why or else they're causing fires, the FBI isn't investigating anyone. They don't tell us WHY an arson occurred. Who knows how many of these apps exist in other markets, etc. The last global wildfire article I saw said either 86 or 96 arsons were arrested. I can't remember if it was France or in Africa.

This is THE strangest wildfire year anyone has had and the news is nowhere.

I'm not the only ex-tech wildland person, plenty of laid off firefighters right now back to their old lives.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/17/climate/betting-wildfires-pol...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/arrested-suspi...

Re: New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

#112

Post by kevinwang »

Zigurd wrote: post #53
altmanaltman wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say prediction markets are more dangerous since they don't claim its gambling while sports gambling is much more explicit (not that the industry is a saint by any means)

It's also an obvious and cynical regulatory dodge. Prediction markets make the bulk of their profit from sports betting.

obviously and definitely true in their current form. But it's maybe worth clarifying that before this last year or two, when Kalshi became an obvious regulatory dodge (including adding sports and really leaning into the gambling demographic), many were interested in prediction markets not just for that purpose: e.g. the rationalist community seems to have had a longstanding interest in the idea, manifold didn't have real money, and predictit (which is like a decade old) had academic origins.

As a tangent, it reminds me a bit of cryptocurrency: in the earliest days the interested parties have a mix of intellectual (can it be done? How can it be done?) and some idealistic (this technology will have utility, like reducing spam or libertarianism for crypto, or giving us a more accurate and precise understanding of the world for prediction markets) values. Of course, as both are directly financial, the third value is that one stands to get rich off of the technology. This third value might be adequately communally suppressed in the beginning, but the force of money gradually makes this third value the only one that matters, and both technologies become net-negatives on humanity.

Re: New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

#113

Post by lkey »

woah wrote: post #45

Unfortunately, this shows how much facts and reality have been turned into nothing more than a loyalty test by both sides of our political debate. > A partnership between The Times (for The Athletic) and Kalshi would also provide validation that their prediction market data should be taken seriously as an indicator of the future. Facts prove otherwise. They could have objected to the partnership on any number of vali…

Christ, just say you are conservative and don't like unions and their political stances. 'Accuracy' doesn't matter at all when it comes to assessing harm, but the existence of a market signal itself can change outcomes, and then much vaunted 'accuracy' becomes a mechanism for fraud in a new and different way.

Even taking your nitpick a little bit seriously, behold:

> Retail prediction market traders pick winners 51.3% of the time yet lose money; automated traders achieve coin-flip accuracy yet earn $133 million.

The entire enterprise exists to move money from gamblers to companies. The externalities (suicide, social degradation) of this transaction is bourne by society.

Re: New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

#114

Post by orangecat »

amelius wrote: post #97
bluecalm wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want short term trading because you want the prices to be as close to efficient as possible. You may never trade short term but at some point you are going to buy and at some point you are going to sell. Market being far from efficient one would hurt you there. So let them trade and discover price. You don't have to play that game but you still benefit.

How much will it hurt me? Maybe I'm OK with being hurt through the markets if it means the world is a saner and more fair place?

Ok, and how does banning short-term trading make the world more fair?

Re: New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

#115

Post by dylan604 »

esalman wrote: post #84
gadders wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realise that countries other than the USA exist, right? The UK has had various forms of sports gambling legal for nearly 100 years and society hasn't crumbled and neither did sport.

Sports gambling is controlled by FTC in the US. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket found a loophole where they can run gambling operations under CFTC and and not be controlled by FTC. There needs to be some legislative actions from the Congress to close the loophole.

What are the odds on the prediction market that this will happen?

Re: New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

#116

Post by gdulli »

gadders wrote: post #81
gdulli wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine two siblings, one who can handle the freedom of choosing their own bedtime and one who cannot.

I don't see any country limitation in the original comment.

Likely an Amerocentric comment, yes, that assumes gambling can only be as destructive and predatory as it is in the US. I don't know anything about how it works in the UK but it's plausible to me that it's not as harmful a force there, as you say.

Re: New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

#117

Post by amelius »

cyberax wrote: post #107
bluecalm wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want short term trading because you want the prices to be as close to efficient as possible. You may never trade short term but at some point you are going to buy and at some point you are going to sell. Market being far from efficient one would hurt you there. So let them trade and discover price. You don't have to play that game but you still benefit.

> You want short term trading because you want the prices to be as close to efficient as possible But do I want the prices to be as efficient as possible?

If this whole efficiency argument means I'm going to make $1 more per month while some lousy traders make $100k more per month, then I'd say: to hell with "efficiency". Fairness and wealth equality are more important to me than $1.

Also considering that these traders will use their $100k in ways that my $1 will become worth even less. For example by buying all the housing in my neighborhood and thereby increasing my rent.

Re: New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

#118

Post by Alex3917 »

tantalor wrote: post #57

The linked article is pretty interesting: > found a pattern of [Polymarket] sharing false and misleading information https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/technology/polymarket-soc... They don't have much to say about Kalshi other than "unlike real mainstream journalism, there’s no accountability". Which isn't saying much, because nobody is claiming prediction markets are a type of journalism.

> nobody is claiming prediction markets are a type of journalism.

James Surowiecki wrote an entire book essentially saying otherwise.

Re: New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

#119

Post by hectdev »

jceg wrote: post #109

Most of the top level comments support scrapping the deal, most of them on the basis that "sports gambling is a cancer." A cancer for whom? I want to take the opposite position: let people do whatever they want, as long as they bear the consequences of their decisions instead of socializing the risk. You don't like betting or gambling? Great, then don't do it. But forcing your preferences on others is not the way.

How do you protect the risk from falling on society? I think that is the crux of it, it is not something you can cleanly separate which is where regulation steps in. The question is, how much money and influence can these companies shore up before that regulation hits?

Re: New York Times and The Athletic workers demand company scrap Kalshi deal

#120

Post by amelius »

orangecat wrote: post #114
amelius wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much will it hurt me? Maybe I'm OK with being hurt through the markets if it means the world is a saner and more fair place?

Ok, and how does banning short-term trading make the world more fair?

For one thing because now people who own high-speed low-latency connections to stock markets have no advantage over "normal" people who actually do meaningful work, like being a policeman or nurse.
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