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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

#201
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fabricating, purchasing, or misrepresenting customer experience is deceptive advertising and is a form of fraud. Doesn’t this make every ad fraud? It’s an actor pretending to enjoy drinking Coca Cola, every ad is the same.

How do you know the actor is merely pretending ? Maybe they actually it?

Not GP, but here is how I know. Messi and Steve Carell did an ad for local chips brand, (market size < 10 million people). There is no way that brand could afford them. Searched online and found the same ad for Lay's. Turns out Pepsi owns a lot of local snack brands. They'll buy local brand and if it's popular they will keep the brand (instead of replacing it with global brand like Lay's). Ad is recorded for all brands at once, they just replace bag of Lay's with bag of whatever is the local chips they own.

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

#202
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my experience trying out "traditional betting" for the first time with Betfair last Worldcup, and some other platform I tried out before as well. Not sure what Kalshi/others are doing that is so different?

If you're going to gamble, it's probably for the best that your counterparty doesn't also control the platform. I'm not saying that justifies being able to gamble frictionlessly, but it is marginally less exploitative. Eg, back in the day bucket shops (which sold binary options, like prediction markets do) would increase the spread in proportion to their assessment of your skill such that you would lose even if you w…

> I think prediction markets could serve a similar to a futures markets and have a functional purpose in the economy. It could be useful to generate real time estimates of the probability of some events that no one can control and have real economic consequences, like a hurricane.

Even though nobody can control them, some people can predict them better than others. (Meteorologists with good models and supercomputers, etc.) In general it's impossible to prevent the appearance of insider trading in prediction markets, and it's also impossible -- unless you massively restrict what people can bet on -- to prevent people from doing things for bets to resolve in their favor, which turns those "markets" into "bounties." (The same guys who theorized prediction markets were the ones who theorized assassination markets.)

They're fundamentally broken and the fact that they're allowed is a sign and symptom of a dysfunctional society.

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

#203

The WSJ ran an earlier article stating that unless you have access to a lot of data, computing power, and statisticians, you're going to lose on those bets.

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

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

#205

The alternative would be to ask both sides of the bets to record a video, and tell them to only post winning bids, but to pay out to both sides. Is that really better? Classic tactic by the bet picking gambler gurus and is impossible to confirm. I guess Polymarket too will learn to be more subtle now.

There's no "both sides" of the bets in this case. All the bets researched by the WSJ were fake, none of those bets was ever placed.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with cross-border enforcement. Also the operator is completely legal/compliant with it's jurisdictions laws as they allow us players (many now blacklist the us, but some not ) So they won't accept any foreign judgement . That's why most countries rather target their infrastructure (psps/banking etc ..) Even Eu countries had/have severe problems with Malta (due e.g Article 56A of the malta gaming act, which…

Make the websites unconnectable from the US. Make domestic ISPs not route the traffic to the site else jail time for the executives. Make VPNs not route traffic to the site else jail time for the executives and being null routed by domestic ISPs. If you really want to crack down on it, then it could be done.

In the ancient days of 2011, this was done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg

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

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There could easily be. There's no reason you couldn't publish some Elo-like thing on teams or players, if that was your interest - you don't need gambling to get a good idea of who the favorite is. But the interest is in gambling, so most people inclined to publish such a thing probably bet themselves/sell it as a product to gamblers.

But this is where stuff like prediction markets shine. In chess, for instance, the prediction market odds are going to be way closer to the outcome than might be expected because of the players' ratings. This is because skilled bettors are capable of considering things like exact matchups, history, short-term performance/form, and many other factors that a static rating can't really account for. Incidentally this is…

You can build a model accounting for all the things you like, you don't have to limit yourself to Elo (its main selling point is that it's easy enough that players can easily calculate how many rating points they stand to lose/gain) or Glicko (almost as easy).

Even in the most optimistic case, betting market accuracy will be limited by the commission (if you have a better estimate than the market, but not sufficiently better that you'll make money on it, you don't bet), and I think even a not-terribly-smart model can get you there for chess games. We don't need betting markets for the prediction's sake.

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

#208
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pretend they are "market" and not gambling to avoid regulations.

It is not pretend, it is technically correct (the best kind of correct). Redefining what gambling is, is a different problem.

It's a market in the same way that poker and blackjack are "markets" on which cards are most likely to appear. You don't need to redefine what gambling is.

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

#210

The WSJ ran an earlier article stating that unless you have access to a lot of data, computing power, and statisticians, you're going to lose on those bets.

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.

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