America's Wumao: Inside Polymarket's Paid Quote-Retweet Esports Program

My Instagram ads are just filled with Polymarket, Kalshi, brand name casinos... it's endless. It's all low level influencers talking about how much money they're making, how you can bet (and yes, it is betting) any time you have 30 seconds to spare, how easy it makes it all.

I feel like there's been a growing, dark underbelly of gambling addiction since it was legalized online. And it's going to be difficult to walk it back.

(the ones that truly blow my mind are the promo ads for people gambling on buying mystery collectible cards then virtually "ripping" the pack open. Grown adult men paying hundreds of dollars! Absolutely wild.)

Lesser known is that Polymarket’s Twitter accounts themselves are actually rebranded personal accounts from (often cancelled) esports personalities. People who have given up their brand or their career sold their accounts to Polymarket, who rebranded them.

You can check by looking up tweets from their account IDs. I think it’s possible they may have even left up the old tweets if you scroll back far enough.

> I feel fine participating because Polymarket has no house edge or VIG

> Prediction markets are PVP thats the way i look at it

This is true but people should at least be informed that the overwhelming majority of traders are HFT firms with faster access to data and the prediction markets than you. These firms pay the prediction markets for that access, and the losses that happen on prediction markets flow to these few large HFT shops.

Whatever other analysis makes sense here, can you imagine a less satisfying job? I think cleaning up elephant dung would give me more career satisfaction than this.

For anyone wondering what "wumao" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party:

> The 50 Cent Party, also known as the 50 Cent Army or wumao (/ˈwuːmaʊ/; from Chinese: 五毛; lit. 'five dimes'), are Chinese government employees posting online comments to divert public attention or promote positive sentiment.

> ...

> The name "50 Cent Party" is derived from claims that government hired commentators are reportedly paid RMB¥0.50 (5 jiao) for every post in order to shape public opinion in ways favorable towards Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies.[1][5][6]

So basically paid shills.

Totally not gambling though

They do this on Reddit as well. Some accounts post about news and events with an image attached, and just so happen to include a reference to Polymarket somewhere in the image every time, even when it makes no sense.

This is definitely slimy, but it's pretty much bog-standard slimy marketing practice these days, no? Like these is framed as though it's a big expose, but isn't it common knowledge that tons of companies do this kind of thing?

It’s fun to think of showing this title to somebody in the year 2000 and telling them that it’s actually completely intelligible

Well well well