Is the real crime here that they were too lazy to lie with selective facts?
Is this even a question? Yes, it would be less fraudulent.
There was no "promotes healthy whatever" it was like "this will make your skin younger and eliminate/prevent wrinkles and other signs of aging."
Then the quiet fast-talking guy said that none of their health claims have been reviewed by the FDA.
So that's where we are now. Everything is scams and nobody will do anything about it.
If I were to have my way, I'd put a law in place that limits bets to $5 max and monthly bets to $150 per month. Letting them go higher encourages some of the worst aspects of society.
We will see crazy things like athletes being injured or murdered in order to win bets. We are already seeing crazy things like white house insiders placing bets on when wars will start.
One of the few ways to really solve this problem is reducing the possible amount of award so the individuals placing these bets don't feel like they have to take matters into their own hands to win.
And this helped weed out all but the most addicted gamblers. Now there is no friction, the platforms are free to create dark patterns to encourage problem gambling, and the vice has zero social cost.
We are not suing polymarket. We are not suing the marketing company. And we don't want online censorship.
IMO, the marketing company / media company should be sued.
- This is precisely what made television such a bad experience. You could really feel the hand reaching through the screen to shake you. Demanding that you feel one way or another. Particularly with commercials, but of course with everything else as well.
- The mediums of television and radio were heavily gate-kept (even with the advent of cable) compared to the internet and social media. You didn't have the insanity of Twitter accounts from east Asia spamming BBC (not the news channel) propaganda, or Russia, Iran, and others attempting to inflame racial hatred, etc.
It's not a wholly brand new thing, but the reach, scale, and variety are so much greater that it might as well be brand new.
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 badly.
(I was also shocked that when looking at my credit card bill online, next to the Kalshi deposit line item it showed a promo “would you like to split this payment over 12 month?” and seemingly was only available for that one transaction. So I could have deposited $1000 via CC into Kalshi and paid it back $83/mo over 12 months.)
This industry is wild.
> “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
I guess Polymarket too will learn to be more subtle now.
A few years ago crypto gambling really took off. The big fish here is Stake. Back when Twitch still allowed slots, there was a flood of slots streamers. Ultimately this led to Twitch banning gambling. This was such an issue that Stake created their own live streaming platform (ie Kick). That should tell you how lucrative it was.
But what came out was that there was different contracts the streamers had. Some were paid a hefty fee and they got to keep any winnings. Why anyone would choose this is beyond me because over time your expected return is negative. The other option was that you could "gamble" with fake money. None of it was real. And none of it was disclosed.
I never understood why people would atch someone play slots all day but some people did. I think psychologically it's a bit like mukbang where people live vicariously through someone else's gluttony. With gambling, the psychological hook is so strong that it can be triggered by watching someone else gamble. But that's just a guess. Luckily, I've never been bitten by the gambling bug. It's one of the worst addictions.
I think fake gambling in particular should be illegal or, in the very least, disclosed publicly.
God I cant believe I wrote that
Consider the probabilities in polymarket as the prob. of the polymarket market itself outcomes rather than reality.
Do you think in a food commercial the people eating the product are showing their genuine emotion? It's all acting.
But my biggest fear is for my kids. I'm doing my best to teach them about the duplicity that exists in this world, and that's precisely why I'm against blanket social media bans for under-16s.
By the time kids turn 17, they've hit the rebel stage. And that's exactly when the freedom to access social media arrives. At that point, they won't listen to parents. They are going to get soo badly burnt.
This is why I advocate for controlled, early access to social media for children. As a parent, I can monitor what they follow and teach them to distinguish right from wrong.
But with these blanket bans, that's taken out of my hands entirely. They grow up sheltered in a picture-perfect world...and then, boom.
