A pair of investigations by The Wall Street Journal and Politico has turned up the kind of Polymarket shenanigans that no legit Federal Trade Commission should let slide. But this is the Trump administration so…
The company “has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators,” as The Journal described its findings in its subtitle. The Journal’s article is behind a paywall (and I’ll be damned if I’ll subscribe to a Murdoch publication), but I found a decent summary elsewhere.
“Polymarket has been paying influencers to create and share videos of themselves making trades on a dummy website it created. Of the more than 1,100 videos analyzed, 70% featured fake bets, and 118 featured creators reacting to old footage and fake wins,” PCMag reported.
Politico’s findings are available to the public. In great detail, its article described how Polymarket paid influencers such as Riley Gaines and Brian Krassenstein to promote its prediction markets and hail their successes, usually without disclosure.
“At least 20 of the content creators identified by POLITICO promoted Polymarket on social media after they started receiving money from [chief marketing officer, Matthew] Modabber,” the article said. “During the 14-month span reflected in the payment records, they posted about Polymarket at least 490 times on the social media platform X without clearly disclosing a paid partnership.”
Oddly, “Modabber used his personal PayPal account, which is registered to an email for a salad spot he co-founded, to send over $2.5 million to more than 800 people during the 14-month span” of Politico’s analysis.
Even more suspicious: A Polymarket spokesperson “declined to answer questions on the company’s strategy for partnering with influencers, its policies for disclosing those deals on social media, why Modabber used a personal account for the transactions and whether the payments were reported as business expenses to the IRS.”
Gaines’ entire right-wing-influencer career has been built on whining about the unfairness of trans women in sports (after she suffered the tragedy of tying for fifth place with a trans woman and not receiving a trophy on the spot). But she’s just fine with not letting her fans know that the company she’s promoting paid her to do so.
Interestingly, one of Gaines’ promotions was for Polymarket’s “DOGE dashboard,” which was created to track the cuts. She hyped it as “awesome!” and other paid promoters similarly slobbered.
In June, Polymarket inked a partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI, Politico said. “Eight of the roughly two dozen influencers reviewed by POLITICO posted about the partnership on the same day, all within hours of one another.” One wrote, “X is about to change the game with this and it’s honestly a match made in heaven.”
Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket, according to Politico. By wild coincidence, I’m sure, the Trump administration dropped investigations into Polymarket. The company had been banned, since 2022, in the U.S. for operating without a license, Politico noted, but Trump’s action “effectively clear[ed] the way for Polymarket to re-enter the U.S. market by acquiring a federally regulated exchange.” Then, “Last week, he attacked several blue state leaders who have sought to regulate the platforms, saying it’s ‘critically important’ the federal government take the lead and that the companies ‘will thrive.’”
The above video has an excellent explanation of how Polymarket’s schemes worked (H/T Pam Spaulding).
