Betting touts and tip sheets are an ancient form of corruption. Bets on pope elections in the 1500s featured fake tips. Sports betting and the stock market are always packed with fake info, paid to change the odds so the payer can win bigger.
So it’s no surprise that Polymarket and Kalshi are using AI to continue the dirty tradition. Via Columbia Journalism Review, an investigation found hundreds of fake items about upcoming elections, each including a link to a nonexistent Associated Press story.
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One entry in that timeline is titled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announces a run for president in 2028,” and describes how this news “polarized the electorate” as “some investors reassessed her electability.” The summary is followed by a citation: the familiar logo of the Associated Press. But clicking the link takes users to a page that doesn’t exist, and Ocasio-Cortez has never announced a presidential run.
Six weeks after that initial entry, a follow-up annotation reported that Ocasio-Cortez had disclosed a campaign fundraising shortfall so severe that her market price collapsed by 40 percent. AP News was cited again. The link on this citation also goes to a page that doesn’t exist, with a URL that misspells her name.
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Evan Barker and other inside types agree that AOC isn’t interested in running for president, and hasn’t formed the usual infrastructure to prepare for a run.
Substack is part-owned by Polymarket. In the above, polarized the electorate resembles the standard headline template in Substack’s “news” section. Each headline claims that an event “ignites controversy” or “fuels world debate” or similar fiery terms. Most of the events are uninteresting to most of the world.
Polistra's Mill 