Live data from Hacker News

Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators

wsj.com

271–280 of 424 posts

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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not sure about Kalshi, however on most sports betting sites you actually are betting against the house. The betting sites all have in-house models (or piggyback off other sites) that are much better at predicting odds than the general public. If someone is making money then the sites just place limits on that account so they're not losing money.

It's not too complicated

The average player loses money. Hence the opposite side will make money

Exceptions are dealt accordingly

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

#272

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.

There's an old phrase that says something like "Look around the table, if you cant see the mark you're it." - if you think you are not betting against the house on a gambling site, you're VERY it.

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

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see sins. Politicians see sin taxes, political will to spin up regulatory beurocracies, etc, etc.

We used to debate things like the harms to society of gambling, now it’s a silent decree that it’s not only legal but the basis for our economy. The same group who used to preach family values turned out to be the biggest casino pimps and pornographers.

Meanwhile, small poker groups and gambling dens patronized by consenting adults routinely get busted.

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no house on polymarket, it's pvp.

Of course there is a house. You have a spread and probably a ton of other not so obvious fees. The house always wins by design, especially on polymarket.

No not really. Polymarket collects fees which are simple and deterministic. Bets on outcomes are tokens on the blockchain and can be "split" ($1 into YES/NO outcome tokens) and "redeemed" (YES & NO outcome tokens into $1). Placing a bet is simply a market order on a plain ol' central-limit orderbook for these tokens. The only house there is maybe the market makers, which isn't a house. If it were a type of "house", then NYSE/NASDAQ has a house too.

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

#275

> He compared the videos to fast-food commercials, where food can appear more appealing than it does in real life. > “We’re depicting what actually happens,” he said. The cope is real. They all know they are destroying lives by promoting gambling to young people and eventually some of them are going to overspend and get addicted. But yeah, it's just like an ad for a burger

It is time to admit that the Chinese were right when they built their great firewall. You either protect yourself from America or your civilization is lost to the void.

Online betting was huge in several other developed countries first. America got late to a trend. If anything, a Great Firewall in the USA would have protected it from the trend.

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

#276
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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

There are two ways to view a market (prediction or stock): as socially accepted gambling for posh elites (and now every wannabe rich), and as a prediction engine that refines people's opinions, beliefs and information into a most accurate estimate possible.

If you take the first view, insider trading is dysfunctional and unfair. If you take the second view, insider trading is the entire point, it's how you get strong signal into the system.

Prediction markets were conceptualized by people taking the second view.

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

#277
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…

> 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…

> Exactly same reason why porn sites use their own specialist payment processors

They're called high-risk payment processors and they usually handle all sorts of "legal but sketchy" sectors like porn, gambling, crypto, legalized drugs/vapes, MLMs, etc. It's not even some shadowy darknet industry, if you just search for "high risk payment processor" there is plenty of them which look very professional and even provide official Shopify integrations and stuff.

Interesting that if you go to one of their websites they also handle some pretty normal industries like "furniture" or "travel" just because of the high chargeback rate in them.

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

#278
post #186

> He compared the videos to fast-food commercials, where food can appear more appealing than it does in real life. > “We’re depicting what actually happens,” he said. The cope is real. They all know they are destroying lives by promoting gambling to young people and eventually some of them are going to overspend and get addicted. But yeah, it's just like an ad for a burger

The burger ad is also getting people addicted and destroying lives. But with burgers most people blame the victims. In my opinion it's all the same. Gambling, junk food, drugs, guns... Lots of money to be made, lots of lives destroyed.

> The burger ad is also getting people addicted and destroying lives.

I think it will take quite a while to wipe out one's life savings eating burgers.

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

#279
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…

> 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.

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

#280

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.

because no one's ever had their wallet/purse with their ID in it stolen?
Post reply on HN