384
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
384 points (99.5% liked)
Technology
86485 readers
2874 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I think the distinction is important. Gambling is random outcome. Prédiction means you could influence the outcome. Think of a terrorist betting on the timing of the next attack
Actually, yeah.
It's also gambling. But the potential for corruption is just on a whole other level; "gambling" is a euphemism for prediction markets.
I think it's silly you're getting downvoted over semantics; gambling has influenced outcomes, yes, technically, but it's generally a self-contained game.
So poker isn't gambling? Ok.
It is and it isn't. The hand you get dealt is random (assuming no funny business) but the people who do consistently well are playing their opponents more than their cards.
If you're influencing the outcome via some private mechanism that's a crime and is in fact illegal (a little thing known as insider trading or cheating depending on how you go about it). So per your definition either you can't influence the outcome in which case it's gambling, or you can in which case it's illegal and you're committing a crime.
All that said I think the definition of gambling being truly random isn't quite right. Gambling has always been about statistical outcomes because if it was truly random nobody would ever make any money off of it so nobody would waste their time. Remember the house always wins because they control the odds. These sites are just bookies in techbro clothing using marketing and legal loopholes to run illegal gambling sites.
Insider trading applies to securities. Polymarket bets are not securities.
Manipulation violates Polymarket's ToS, but that's not criminal.
Now, it might meet the legal criteria for fraud, depending on what one does. But that's a "maybe." I'd say that is far easier to get away with than insider trading. EDIT: Especially when hopping jurisdictions (which is not so easy with securities).