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ArticleBody:When gambling platform Polymarket made an early morning announcement projecting Ken Paxton would win the Texas Republican senate primary, it had no polling data to go off, and no survey methodology to inform the decision.
The announcement — styled as a 'BREAKING' piece of polling news, invoking the language of journalists — instead followed the betting line: millions of dollars which, in that moment, skewed heavily toward Paxton. Voters, it turned out, had another candidate in mind: John Cornyn, who only had an '18 percent chance' of victory at the time of Polymarket's announcement. The two have since entered into a runoff, per the New York Times, meaning anybody could still win via ballotage. That's a far cry from Polymarket's original prediction, which was an outright victory for Paxton in the first round of voting. It's also part and parcel for prediction markets like Polymarket, which increasingly styles itself as a newswire service on social media, enticing users to bet big on the day's chaotic events. https://twitter.com/Polymarket/status/2028854871684690245?s=20 Just like Polymarket's platform — where users can bet on a range of issues, from US airstrikes on Venezuela to the #1 app on the Apple App Store — Polymarket's newsy announcements take on many forms. 'JUST IN: Police activity underway at Epstein Island,' one post on the company's X-formerly-Twitter profile declares. 'BREAKING: Iraq hit by nationwide blackout,' another hollers. As Polymarket inundates millions of timelines with newsy statements, the efficacy of each announcement can be hard to parse. The Epstein island police activity, for example, is likely immaterial to anyone betting on markets related to Jeffrey Epstein on Polymarket. As TMZ wrote, recent police activity on the infamous Little St James is 'related to an active investigation that does NOT have to do with Epstein.' Other posts all but beg users to bet a certain line: 'JUST IN: The Pentagon declares the US will have complete control of Iranian skies in under a week,' another challenges. Polymarket's reckless approach to handling information is made even more egregious by new brand partnerships with legitimate corporate newsgroups. Dow Jones, a division of News Corp and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and Investor's Business Daily inked a deal with Polymarket back in January, for example. Media platforms like Substack and Yahoo Finance, meanwhile, have also signed new content agreements with the company. Even Polymarket's arch-competitor, Kalshi, is getting in on the frenzy, having partnered with CNN to run live betting odds on world events as the newsroom reports them. As legitimate journalism swirls the drain for what might be its final time, prediction markets have positioned themselves as its maladapted heir: a system transforming information into a commodity to be bought and sold. More on Polymarket Prediction Markets Are Sucking Huge Numbers of Young People Into Gambling
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