The value of that to the public is pretty minimal though, seeing as that private information becomes public 1-4 hours before it would've been publicized in the more traditional way. And the signal itself is extremely noisy.

The way it's working though is that they don't provide much information, because there's very little time between their public bet and the outcome they bet on.

By this logic, wouldn't prediction markets be a national security threat?

We get it but what good is it if the insiders come and bet mere hours before the event happens? So we could have known a few hours early? I feel like this is just people trying to justify gambling. In the UK bookies have been doing this forever, it's nothing new. It's just gambling.

How does making a wager cause insider info to be public? All it means is an anonymous account placed money on the outcome, how does it make public anything that an insider knows? It doesn’t.

It incentives them to keep the info secret in order to profit or a wager on a related outcome. The insider info remains secret, all people know is some bloke stood up a new account and placed a big bet.

And for these short timespan bets, it seems utterly useless. If the wagers were only allowed on things two weeks out, and not allow bets on short term events then maybe it could show more info.

This is the theoretical claim.

Now look at Polymarket's advertising. It is 100% presented as a gambling platform, not an information discovery system. There is nothing saying "don't play if you don't have insider information." I do not think that we can reasonably fall back on this defense of these platforms anymore.

I also don't much societal value in these platform's ability to suggest political events a few hours before they happen.

And this wasn't even really the original theoretical claim for these markets. The goal was to financially incentivize research and deep investigation, not to financially incentivize people who have access to hidden information by default. If somebody developed a system for predicting cease fires and used that to win in these markets then we've created a new thing for society. If somebody is just in the room when a cease fire is decided we haven't progressed society at all. All we've done is create a new way for people with power to extract personal wealth.

No, its main function is to extract as much money as possible from those who bet without that private information and without ability to influence bets. They do not actually make the information public.