Polymarket Bet On Deceptive Social Advertising: Wsj
If you can’t trust influencers and a prediction market platform that’s banned in the US, who can you trust? That’s what many people likely asked themselves after the Wall Street Journal reported that Polymarket used fake wagers, a dummy website, and online creators to make predatory ads targeting Americans.
Million-dollar lie: The WSJ’s analysis found creator claims of ~$900,000 in winnings, but if those bets had really been placed, they would have lost ~$166,000.
According to the WSJ report, the scammy content worked like this:
- College-aged creators posted videos of themselves making winning bets. But these were actually made on a fake Polymarket site created by the company (the lowercase ‘l’ was replaced by a capital ‘i’).
- Then, Polymarket paid a marketing firm for clipping, i.e., deploying numerous “sockpuppet” accounts that hid their affiliation with Polymarket, to repost the videos to make them go viral.
According to materials seen by the WSJ, the clippers were only paid if 60% or more of their audience was in the US. Though Polymarket can’t legally operate in the States, it can be accessed via VPN.
Polymarket told CBS News that it is launching an internal investigation into the videos.
Is this illegal? Federal laws require truthful advertising and anyone promoting a product to disclose their business ties. The CFTC wouldn’t comment on potential investigations to the WSJ.—DL
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