[lovich]

Yet another article where the media is sanewashing the subject at hand

> Then there's the potential for insider trading, something that has dogged the prediction market industry, …

From a 2025 article [1]

> Coplan said, “Nobody is under the impression that nobody knows the answer, right? Like, of course, there’s people who are working on it that know when it’s going to come. And I think what’s cool about Polymarket is that it creates this financial incentive for people to go and divulge the information to the market and the market to change, and all of a sudden it’s trading at 95 cents.”

I didn’t know you could be described as being dogged by an issue that you actively courted and espoused. Additionally I remembered that quote but it took effort to find as it appears Kalshi and Polymarket decided the heat on those views was a little too much and have done a PR wave since January of this year to claim that they totally don’t support insider trading despite that being a core of their business concept.

I guess we’ve always been at war with East Asia again, I’ll update my firmware to be a good little drone if even media organizations like npr and apnews are just going to be this blatant with reframing history

[1] https://casinobeats.com/2025/11/20/polymarket-founder-shayne...

[mwigdahl]

There's big money in it, so of course there's going to be a huge PR push to cast it as a great moral and societal good.

The thing that gets me is that the rationalists who were such outspoken proponents of prediction markets (look up "futarchy" and the many positive articles about it) failed to predict the astonishing amounts of corruption that have come along for the ride with them.

[atmavatar]

Strictly speaking, we cannot say for sure they didn't predict the corruption -- merely that they didn't warn about it.

For all we know, they're participating in the corruption, which is why they were outspoken proponents.

[LargeWu]

Of course they're participating, even driving it. Notably there were large bets placed predicting imminent military actions in Iran and Venezuela. In at least one case it was verifiably placed by one of the individuals planning it. We've reached the point where our country's leaders can profit not by the outcome of the war, but even just by the very act of initiating it.

[water-data-dude]

I was never rabid about it, but I thought prediction markets were a cool idea for a while. I didn't anticipate all of the crazy second order effects.

[totallyhuman]

Same here. I soured on it a bit when I noticed them becoming a bit of a rhetorical stick, "well if you think you're right, go place a bet!". I guess that's good if you want people to only make claims they seriously believe in, but it had a tendency to shut down discussion, and I feel like there's something valuable in being able to discuss and debate without the expectation that being right should be rewarded with money, and being wrong should be punished with same.

The negative second-order effects I expected were more about people concealing information and analysis that they otherwise would have shared, replacing complex but informative discussions with a black-box oracle. Boy was I wrong.

[rozab]

The experience we have of sports betting shows that even extraordinarily well compensated sportspeople will cheat to influence events due to greed. That's not such a big problem for something that fundamentally does not matter (sports outcomes). As you apply it to things that do matter, like political appointments, actions in warzones, and even weather measurements, people will and have changed these outcomes to make money.

[xtiansimon]

> “Yet another article where the media is sanewashing the subject at hand.”

I agree this level of public gambling is crazy. Though I’m dismayed with the criticism of mainstream media not taking a stronger stance, which I take is your criticism. Isn’t that a page from the likes of Fox News? Bringing punditry into news? Moral outrage regarding what otherwise appears to be a legal business (online betting)? Even the link you provide used the word “hints” to describe insider trading: “Polymarket Founder Shayne Coplan Hints That Insider Trading is Cool & Sportsbooks are a Scam”

I get that you’re angry, but I don’t understand why NPR is the villain.

[tzs]

What are you talking about?

Kalshi and Polymarket having to do a wave of publicity to try to take off the heat over insider trading shows that the issue of insider trading is in fact dogging the industry.

The NPR article's level of discussion of insider trading is entirely appropriate for an article that is not about insider trading.

[lovich]

if an analogy would work for you,

If my friend said they were planning on breaking and entering into homes to steal things for their income, and then complained that they were dogged by accusations of being a thief, I would call them out for being full of shit because they were getting called out for exactly what they planned on doing.

If your argument is that NPR was correct in their description as being dogged by claims of insider trading, then I believe you and I have a difference of opinion on the connotations of the term "dogged" when it comes to describing accusations levied against you for behavior you 100% planned on engaging in.