Investigation: Polymarket is paying creators to make deceptive videos about winning bets, targeting users in the US, where its primary crypto platform is banned
The prediction market has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation
Context & Ripple Effects
Related coverage shows this is not Polymarket’s first use of US-based influencer promotion: Bloomberg reported such payments around election betting in 2024, despite the platform’s US ban.
It also follows New York Times reporting that Polymarket’s social feeds contained hundreds of false or misleading posts while it marketed itself as “News 2.0.” Against that backdrop, the Journal’s findings extend the concern from platform-owned content to paid creator distribution.
First-order effects
- Polymarket’s creator-marketing program and its claims around winning bets face heightened credibility and compliance scrutiny, particularly where the content reaches US users.
- Paid creators associated with the campaign risk being treated as distributors of misleading promotional material rather than independent commentators.
Second-order effects
- Publisher, licensing, and other commercial partners may reassess the reputational and compliance risk of associating with a prediction-market operator whose social distribution has repeatedly drawn misinformation allegations.
- Competing prediction and betting products may face pressure to make sponsorship disclosures, geographic restrictions, and performance claims more explicit, especially in politically sensitive markets.
Third-order effects
- If repeated promotional practices become a focus of regulators or platforms, prediction markets could be judged not only on market access and contract resolution but also on the integrity of the media systems used to attract users.
- The episode underscores a broader tension in prediction markets’ push to become information products: growth through viral social content can weaken the trust required for prices and market signals to be treated as credible.
The trend: Prediction markets are increasingly being tested as media-like consumer products, making marketing transparency and information integrity as consequential as their underlying trading rules.