An investigation into the prediction market platform Polymarket found the company paid social media creators to post misleading videos promoting its service, with many of those videos showing fake winning bets that would in reality have been losses.
According to a report by Engadget, The Wall Street Journal reviewed 1,105 TikTok videos along with guidance given to creators for crafting their posts. Of those videos, 778 appeared to show someone placing a bet on Polymarket. A closer look revealed that none of those 778 videos featured the actual Polymarket website. Instead, they used dummy sites built to look like the real thing.
The numbers inside the videos were misleading in a more direct way as well. For more than half of the videos that appeared to show winning bets, those bets would in reality have been losses. The Wall Street Journal spoke to creators who worked with Polymarket and reviewed materials they say they were given to make their videos convincing and engaging.
Beyond individual creators, Polymarket reportedly enlisted a social-media army to repost these videos and push them toward viral reach.
Polymarket has drawn attention this year as governments in several countries try to figure out how to regulate prediction markets. Minnesota became the first U.S. state to ban them last month. Other states have moved to do the same, but those efforts have faced legal challenges. In May, Spain blocked both Polymarket and a competing platform, Kalshi, while officials determine whether they violate the country's gambling law.
The investigation adds pressure on a platform that has positioned itself as a legitimate source of crowd-sourced probability data on political and financial events. The findings come at a moment when regulators in multiple jurisdictions are still deciding how prediction markets should be classified and overseen.
