[akudha]

if there's no guardrails to prevent peoeple without souls or the accompanying morals

I am curious - how do you even begin to police such a thing like polymarket? Wouldn't it take enormous resources to do it? Is it even worth it at that scale? They let you bet on anything and everything, right?

I had fun betting $5 here and there

Maybe this is the solution - don't let people bet more than $5. That is small enough for everyone to have some fun and not worth it for insider trading, threatening journalists etc?

[Terr_]

You mean, turn it into a fun minor hobby-time of sharing popular-opinions that are mostly weighted by how common they are, rather than dangling a huge perverse-incentive in front of an insider so that they reveal (or cause) a strong outcome through greed?

Actually, there's another perverse incentive operating on a higher level, when it comes for the people running things: "How is my prediction-market startup supposed to IPO for a bajillion dollars if we're not first-in-line for having sometimes-corrupt insider data? Nobody's going to pay me that much for a company that's just a spicier form of polling."