Yet another Hacker News

Inside Polymarket's paid quote-retweet esports program

57 points paimapi 1 hour ago 41 comments

mock-possum 57 minutes ago | parent

It’s fun to think of showing this title to somebody in the year 2000 and telling them that it’s actually completely intelligible

mcmcmc 52 minutes ago | parent

Totally not gambling though

lwansbrough 51 minutes ago | parent

Lesser known is that Polymarket’s Twitter accounts themselves are actually rebranded personal accounts from (often cancelled) esports personalities. People who have given up their brand or their career sold their accounts to Polymarket, who rebranded them.

You can check by looking up tweets from their account IDs. I think it’s possible they may have even left up the old tweets if you scroll back far enough.

zoeysmithe 20 minutes ago | parent

I have an old reddit account with a lot of karma. I once got an offer for it, I believe around $2,000. Maybe that offer was a scam, but people seem to be contacted to buy their accounts. Its incredible to me how much this is being done by deep pocketed marketers, and I imagine botnet operators working for heaven knows who. This something not talked about much but buying up and re-branding accounts with established viewership or high-karma happens a lot.

I have seen it politically and part of shady marking. I read the girlsgamer sub on reddit and I remember a big influx of "I'm a woman and I support (current game with sexist elements)." Back then you could see everyone's post and comment history. You could see these accounts went quiet a year or two or three ago and their history was very male coded, then came back on-line recently pushing culture-war narratives and describing themselves very differently than their original posts and comments.

I also saw the same thing with some suspicious right-wing posts on some political subs I'm on. Just an old account that had little to no political posting history suddenly coming alive and posting non-stop politics.

I find it interesting and suspicious reddit only started allowing hidden profiles after this and when people started pointing this out.

I think its safe to say all social media is badly compromised and gamed by monied interests.

10111001 50 minutes ago | parent

For anyone wondering what "wumao" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party:

> The 50 Cent Party, also known as the 50 Cent Army or wumao (/ˈwuːmaʊ/; from Chinese: 五毛; lit. 'five dimes'), are Chinese government employees posting online comments to divert public attention or promote positive sentiment.

> ...

> The name "50 Cent Party" is derived from claims that government hired commentators are reportedly paid RMB¥0.50 (5 jiao) for every post in order to shape public opinion in ways favorable towards Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies.[1][5][6]

So basically paid shills.

devy 16 minutes ago | parent

Your didn't finish the explainer:

  A study published in 2017 points out that almost everything known about the 50 Cent Party in the past had been wrong. Most combative posts and commentators attributed to the 50 Cent Party were instead linked to private nationalistic individuals.

So the term became a misnomer.

verdverm 14 minutes ago | parent

How do we know this was not 4d chess? /s !/s

10111001 3 minutes ago | parent

> Your [sic] didn't finish the explainer:

What do you mean? I posted the minimum amount to explain an unfamiliar term. I wasn't going to quote the whole article.

> So the term became a misnomer.

What's your point? Shilling doesn't have to be combative.

riskd 50 minutes ago | parent

Well well well

kart23 49 minutes ago | parent

> I feel fine participating because Polymarket has no house edge or VIG

> Prediction markets are PVP thats the way i look at it

This is true but people should at least be informed that the overwhelming majority of trading volume is HFT firms with faster access to data and the prediction markets than you. These firms pay the prediction markets for that access, and the losses that happen on prediction markets flow to these few large HFT shops.

qoez 36 minutes ago | parent

As someone who makes their living doing PMs this is far from the reality. There's lots of markets that are beatable without a latency edge. Also anyone can apply to be co-located with their servers if you do KYC.

dewey 34 minutes ago | parent

Do you know what KYC stands for?

qoez 28 minutes ago | parent

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfY-3Dl3yxq8HKFjFad...

kart23 24 minutes ago | parent

> anyone

> use of the Polymarket site (the “Polymarket Site”) for trading activities, by persons or entities who are U.S. persons (“U.S. Persons”), as defined in the enclosed Appendix, is strictly prohibited, with no exceptions

dewey 15 minutes ago | parent

Thanks, I misunderstood that and thought you meant colocating next to their server by figuring out where their infra is. Didn't know it's an official feature of theirs.

vgatherps 30 minutes ago | parent

While this is true, retail click traders are still not remotely on the same playing field in any regard as an electronic trading desk who takes the market seriously.

qoez 26 minutes ago | parent

That's obviously true, but at least retail are totally allowed to place maker orders and act as the 'sportsbook' themselves. Taker orders are usually (but far from always) -ev but again at least there's the option to be a maker. Many of the best opportunities is to take liquidty from HFT firms with poor prices as well (there's too many markets for them to price it all correctly and you have an advantage by being allowed infinite time to think about how to price a given market).

mwhitfield 38 minutes ago | parent

This is definitely slimy, but it's pretty much bog-standard slimy marketing practice these days, no? Like these is framed as though it's a big expose, but isn't it common knowledge that tons of companies do this kind of thing?

verdverm 13 minutes ago | parent

this is the kind of thing we need to make illegal

is there a justification for it not being illegal?

afavour 37 minutes ago | parent

My Instagram ads are just filled with Polymarket, Kalshi, brand name casinos... it's endless. It's all low level influencers talking about how much money they're making, how you can bet (and yes, it is betting) any time you have 30 seconds to spare, how easy it makes it all.

I feel like there's been a growing, dark underbelly of gambling addiction since it was legalized online. And it's going to be difficult to walk it back.

(the ones that truly blow my mind are the promo ads for people gambling on buying mystery collectible cards then virtually "ripping" the pack open. Grown adult men paying hundreds of dollars! Absolutely wild.)

esseph 31 minutes ago | parent

> (the ones that truly blow my mind are the promo ads for people gambling on buying mystery collectible cards then virtually "ripping" the pack open. Grown adult men paying hundreds of dollars! Absolutely wild.)

Sounds just like a lot of NFTs.

Avicebron 28 minutes ago | parent

Gambling and betting always seem target explotation of people who aren't well off already. Like lottery tickets I worry that Polymarket, Kalshi and the like are ways to further destroy the marginal in an apathetic if not malign political environment. It doesn't seem like anyone is doing anything about it.

SpicyLemonZest 19 minutes ago | parent

A number of state governments are working hard to do something about it. The reason it seems like no action is being taken is that they've bribed the federal government to take their side.

kokanee 7 minutes ago | parent

I have a theory that the prevalence of gambling, trading, and investing is a natural response to wealth inequality and automation. Wealth has always correlated with risk (e.g. business ownership) but as the prospects for wealth diminish, the amount of risk people are willing (forced?) to take on grows.

An optimistic view could be that in a future where AI drives most of GDP and UBI covers basic needs, well-regulated betting marketplaces could provide an opportunity for people to get ahead (or at least do something) for example by developing algorithms and AIs that do rigorous backtesting and apply institutional-grade risk management strategies.

The pessimistic view is that these marketplaces are just another cause of wealth inequality, they will always extract more wealth than they generate, and there is no place for them in a balanced, healthy economy.

everdrive 26 minutes ago | parent

>My Instagram ads

That's your one-two punch right there. On Instagram, and viewing ads. Best thing to do is avoid both.

afavour 19 minutes ago | parent

I knew someone was going to post this. Thank you for the startling and brand new to me revelation that both Instagram and advertising are Not Good.

criddell 15 minutes ago | parent

Now you know that you were the problem all along!

afavour 9 minutes ago | parent

Oh wow so if I personally quit Instagram every user will stop receiving advertising for these wildly addictive and destructive services? If only I’d known!

everdrive 6 minutes ago | parent

I didn't say it to be rude to you, so I apologize if that's how I came off. I think a lot of these problems don't have real, practical technological or policy solutions. (those solutions could exist in principle, but they're never going to work.) I think all we can do is walk away from these platforms.

lapetitejort 13 minutes ago | parent

I know several organizations who have surrendered all online presence to social media, primarily instagram. I cannot find their events anywhere else. My dream is to have a fake account that scrapes all accounts I care about and sends just the highlights to me. I am sure that Meta spends an inordinate amount of time preventing this

ShinyLeftPad 23 minutes ago | parent

you can work on your timeline and who you follow, maybe use a vpn, and make sure meta doesn't really know who you are. my timeline has none of that shit.

afavour 17 minutes ago | parent

If I cared enough to go to those lengths I’d just stop using Instagram. I don’t really object to being shown these ads, it’s just wild to me how widespread this all is.

ShinyLeftPad 13 minutes ago | parent

i scroll past ads quickly without reading them. but i would for sure object to being shown those ads. if i spotted something like polymarket i would do whatever i can to avoid it (block the account, tell the algo "no").

qurren 14 minutes ago | parent

Meanwhile these degenerate folk play these things irresponsibly, become public charges, and I have to pay the brunt of it as a taxpayer who isn't going to get any of my money back in the form of things that benefit me. Social Security will be insolvent, I still don't have universal healthcare or functional public transportation, and the cost of everything is going up while I'm getting taxed to death.

The only actual solution I've found is to participate in the "system" itself and actually get my money back from the "system". I have better math skills than 99.9% of people on the platforms, so I'm able to profit significantly by quant trading on it.

I wish I didn't have to do this. I'd love to be rich just by working and getting to actually keep the money I make from working. Inflation and taxes could be less if everyone was smart with their money. But my money is stolen, used to support this system, so I will just fish it back by playing the house :/

internet101010 10 minutes ago | parent

Pack ripping was huge during COVID. It is always more economical in the long run to buy singles than to rip packs. Generally speaking, the primary purpose of mystery boxes is to dump slow-moving inventory.

guelo 4 minutes ago | parent

Especially difficult to walkback since bribes are basically legal now because once an industry establishes itself it starts buying off politicians.

is_true 4 minutes ago | parent

You must have clicked some at some point, all I get when I have ads on is outdoors gear because I've clicked a few of those ads in the past and my "suggestions" are related to that category.

everdrive 32 minutes ago | parent

Whatever other analysis makes sense here, can you imagine a less satisfying job? I think cleaning up elephant dung would give me more career satisfaction than this.

Blackthorn 31 minutes ago | parent

I'd hope so. Cleaning up elephant dung is doing something of actual value, unlike this.

bakugo 28 minutes ago | parent

They do this on Reddit as well. Some accounts post about news and events with an image attached, and just so happen to include a reference to Polymarket somewhere in the image every time, even when it makes no sense.

verdverm 15 minutes ago | parent

I will still contend putting gambling apps in people's pockets is one of the obviously dumb ideas our society has let happen.