Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

Post by drw85 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:13 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #117

parpfish wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for a while i was using the sports gambling apps to make lots of little bets. it was fun to put $0.50 on a game I normally wouldn't watch and tune in with a real rooting interest. i never bet more that $1 on a game because I knew that I would really dislike losing 'real money'. the fact was that the stakes were completely irrelevant to me. the value came from definitively and publicly taking a side. if you're the fan…

I'd do something fairly similarly, but in a sort of emotional hedge. If in a fight I was really rooting for one guy, I'd put a relatively small amount of money on the other. Ok 'my guy' lost, but hey - dinner's free tonight! It's also quite remarkable how often arbitrage opportunities come up where you can put bets on both sides with a guaranteed win. You'd think they'd all get eaten up by bots, but that's not at all…

Post by vintermann » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:22 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #116

owlninja wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a book this year about sports gambling in the US [1], and it points out how nasty and predatory it is. I think "prediction markets" have even less regulation? I would talk to my sports fan buddies at work and they would say "oh, just how sportsbooks in Vegas operate already", but this is on-demand, in your face, constantly nudging you to bet with dark patterns and "comps". I used to want sports gambling legal…

A bit of a tangent, but many like the moneylines isn't because of gambling but because it tells you who's the favorite/underdog and by what margin. It's like in the equivalent of a chess game of knowing the player's ratings, which itself can directly lead to a nominal moneyline, but in most sports there's no formal predictive rating system.

Post by nairboon » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:24 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #161

rightbyte wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well try to make a withdrawal and see how convinient that might be. Internet casinos are usually easy to get money into but hard to get money out of.

It works just fine. It’s not a casino in the regular sense because you’re betting against other people, not the house.

Post by Saline9515 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:28 AM UTC

duskwuff wrote: post #138

ipython wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Gambling in the real world involved friction. That plus a certain social stigma if you gambled outside of “mainstream” casinos. And this helped weed out all but the most addicted gamblers. Now there is no friction, the platforms are free to create dark patterns to encourage problem gambling, and the vice has zero social cost.

The dark patterns aren't just in online gambling. Nowdays, a lot of brick-and-mortar casinos encourage, or even require, clients to create an account (often framed as a "members club" or "rewards card"), which is used to track the client's activity at the casino and target them with promotions tailored to their behavior. These can be used in some really troubling ways, e.g. by identifying clients who may have a gambl…

Post by bartread » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 7:30 AM UTC

cj wrote: 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…