Not going to defend Polymarket, but that's usually the case for markets that should never existed that depend heavily on opinion and/or reporting.
For example, "Will Trump talk Macron before 31 of March?". Someone is going to get scammed no matter what: the market rules will set some basic resolution scenarios, but you'll find sources saying it was a letter, or sources several countries and in several languages saying that it was an exchange between their offices/assistants, or smoke signals, or god knows what, while a single US source will say they talked without any further detail, or it is simply reported 1 month after the fact when the money has long moved wallets, and then people vote based on the combination of factoids they've been exposed to. In principle the perverse incentive of voting wrong to earn money will make you lose money on the UMA itself (unless there's a coordinated effort, which has already happened, but IME it's rather rare).
Other markets are indisputable bar black swan events, like, "how many Oscars will X win", if it's 6 it's 6 and no source will say 5 or 7. That makes opening disputes 100% a money-losing option.
Polymarket is headquartered in NYC; it's a US company; it has many US customers, and it knows that, even if it did a wink-wink dance "disallowing" that prior to 2024. Since then, it has explicitly expanded into the US market[1]. It is unambiguously subject to US regulations (if we had a regulator who chose to enforce those regulations).
[1]: "Following the end of the investigations, Polymarket announced the acquisition of QCEX, a CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, for $112 million. The acquisition allowed Polymarket to legally operate within the United States under regulatory compliance. The company received an Amended Order of Designation from the CFTC in November 2025 and began actively expanding in the United States market."
Yeah but we can see right through all that lawyer bullshit right? Gambling markets like polymarket are morally corrupt and we having given them too much space in our society already.
That particular part isn't lawyer bullshit. They're beta testing a completely separate system that runs under US regulations. It looks like it'll be legal in a non-bullshit way.
Moral issues are a different topic, and weak geoblocking on the international version is another different topic.
If we're talking about the same case, the EU sanctioned him, the man is at least dual citizen, and received Russian funds via his media company in Turkey, then proceeded to say it was all because it was about his coverage of Gaza. All of that is in the EU sanctions page, but "democratic" media coverage focused and pinned it on the Gaza bit.
If you're talking about Thomas Röper (of Anti-Spiegel) and Alina Lipp, well, it's even more clear cut, not sure how are you trying to sell legal action against those as lack of democracy. It's disingenuous in the best case.
Regarding UK, the 12k figure is real but related to all forms of communication, and by large involving threats, domestic violence and the like. Not for "social media posts".
>Tucker Carlson is under the gun for allegedly being a Russian or is it Iranian agent. But the US is a democracy.
Tucker Carlson took the grifter turn and makes money off it, not unlike Alex Jones. He'll behave like anything that can bring him manageable and profitable attention.
One sided sanctions on journalists for publishing is a sign of autocracy, something you'd expect Idi Amin to do, but then it's Germany, I guess the Austrian influence still exists after 90 years.
Calling autocracy the sanctioning someone for being on the literal payroll of RT, state media of a hostile country where extrajudicial executions of journalists were commonplace before Roscomnadzor was given near absolute powers over media is, again, a very hard sell.
There's a significant asymmetry though, it's not just a bit more work. I'm a bit cynical here, but often it's easier to just overengineer and be safe than to defend a simple solution; obviously depending on the organization and its culture.
When you have a complex solution and an alternative is stacked up against it, everything usually boils down to a few tradeoffs. The simple solution is generally the one with the most tradeoffs to explain: why no HA, why no queuing, why no horizontally scalable, why no persistence, why no redundancy, why no retry, etc. Obviously not all of them will apply, but also obviously the optics of the extensive questioning will hinder any promotion even if you successfully justify everything.
I do it and never had an issue. I get odd emails every now and then with an unused address, for services/people I never contacted though. But I'm talking about perhaps 2-3 per year.
I started laugh reacting at Russian propaganda and now all I get is Russian propaganda, literally half of my posts are boomers, shills and people from "non-aligned" countries falling for the Russia stronk/based west evil/gay meme, and Russian embassies and consulates non-stop DARVOing. But before that it was indeed a constant flurry of thirst traps, ragebait, etc. I only keep using it for a couple of well moderated groups.
For example, "Will Trump talk Macron before 31 of March?". Someone is going to get scammed no matter what: the market rules will set some basic resolution scenarios, but you'll find sources saying it was a letter, or sources several countries and in several languages saying that it was an exchange between their offices/assistants, or smoke signals, or god knows what, while a single US source will say they talked without any further detail, or it is simply reported 1 month after the fact when the money has long moved wallets, and then people vote based on the combination of factoids they've been exposed to. In principle the perverse incentive of voting wrong to earn money will make you lose money on the UMA itself (unless there's a coordinated effort, which has already happened, but IME it's rather rare).
Other markets are indisputable bar black swan events, like, "how many Oscars will X win", if it's 6 it's 6 and no source will say 5 or 7. That makes opening disputes 100% a money-losing option.
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