Calling a betting market »journalism« is quite the innovation: why investigate power, verify facts, or protect sources when you can just put odds on reality and call it data? CBS partnering with Kalshi feels less like the future of news and more like turning election night into a casino with correspondents.

More like sponsored content, rather than content. Or, as we usually call it, advertising.

The problem is they report betting odds as probabilities that something will happen instead of what they really are: pure guesses

If someone haven’t already, someone should see how these gambling sites compare to random chance

Someone should see how many of the winning gambles were based on insider information.

insider information makes them useful predictions.

I used to think gambling should be allowed from a sort of social libertarian-ish perspective. Nowadays, I would be in favor of an outright ban in all forms of gambling, betting, or any other name someone wants to give to the same activity, which includes the stock market.

It’s a rigged game, and the ones who win are the ones who rig the game to begin with.

No idea how that could realistically be enforced with things like exchanging currencies, crypto trading (which can be legitimately useful if wanting to avoid dragnet financial surveillance using something like Monero or wanting to bypass payment processor oligopolies, like when Visa/MasterCard strongarmed PornHub to delete all non-verified videos as an example of an abuse of their power), scalping/trading physical goods, etc., but at the very least, all other forms of direct gambling with money can be banned in the meantime.

I live in a state where gambling/betting is effectively entirely banned. No scratchers, no state lotto, nothin’. And uh, I actually really like it.

When I head to states with gambling it’s always a big shock, like I’ll be in Nevada and they have gas station slot machines, sitting there are these zombies wasting their SS straight into the machines; it’s such a depressing sight, some real fall of civilization shit.

CBS is not a news agency.

“Prediction markets” is sure one hell of a marketing spin.

It’s gambling. Nothing more, nothing less.

Nonsense

It’s not gambling if you know or control the outcome :p

Last week tonight did a good section on prediction markets this year. Tldr yes they are gambling sites, but the name is rooted in reality. Basically, farmers could pre-sell their expected crop yields, aka “futures”. The futures holder could then sell that pink slip to someone else, aka a “futures market” or “prediction market”. Societal leaches saw Draft Kings making shit tons of money and figured they could make shit tons of money by opening it to all aspects of life and argue in court it’s no different than the future markets of crop sales.

Wait until you hear about stock markets. 🙂

As much as y’all don’t want this to be accurate, sadly, it kind of is. Non-US betting markets in 2016, 2020, and 2024 all correctly called the US presidential election better than Five Thirty Eight or polls or any other formerly reliable method.

Edit: Sadly, you all downvoted this out of personal feels and anger, not accuracy of the statement, which has research to back it up. SMH.

theconversation.com/joe-biden-how-betting-markets…

At which point were they more accurate? 5 minutes before the final count was counted? An hour? A day? Without this number is like a percentage with unknown reference.

They were better at 5 minute/hour before networks called results, for sure. 2016 had HRC/dems for congress 80% odds of winning both day before, and before polls closed. 2020 has Biden winning during that time, but when results were being announced state by state, Trump jumped to a 75% chance of winning. Here, the networks were right to say “but Philadelphia hasn’t counted yet” type of hedges to “fake early leads” by Trump who was yelling to stop counting. 2024 was predicted well the whole time.

For the elections I mentioned, it was at least a few days out. Within 24 hours, every one of them was accurate, not just in terms of the binary win/lose aspect, but also if it would be a close race or not, as the spread often includes wins based on electoral college vote totals. Functionally, all it can really do for you is not make you feel like you need to stay up late biting your nails, and give you an idea of what’s really going to happen. Maybe enough time to call people on election day and make sure they voted.

This isn’t just me speculating, it’s well-studied. theconversation.com/joe-biden-how-betting-markets…

How this is this technology related? It stocks.

Soo, bets on a gambling system = journalism?

Doesn’t compute.

not too different than how oil futures are set, and those are a reasonable indicator for gas prices.

Degenerates, for the most part, aren’t involved in oil futures.

Journalists embracing the prediction markets was called an “Op-Ed” back before the internet. Nothing new here just lots of different words arranged in a different way to tell you the same old thing.

Doin’ it for the clicks, not the truth.

There’s no journalism in US anymore. It’s all just different flavors of corporate propaganda.

Especially CBS which is a Larry Ellison owned organization now.

Well, especially Fox and Newsmax and

CBS used to be pretty balanced politically. The Ellison’s are trying to take advantage of that to better sell Trump and his actions to Americans. Fox Nwws and Newsmax are known for their political stance. Trump and people are probably pushing tp get these sites promoted.

Whenever they start talking about polls, they always bring up Kalshi these days. Sometimes they even highlight Kalshi’s predictions as if they are as legit as actual scientifically-based polls, which they are not. Prediction markets are based totally on vibes, and have no place being discussed on a legitimate news platform.

Wouldn’t be surprised if people are buying/selling in order to shape the narrative around debates and news, if you have enough money you can kill/boost stories by deciding what “the markets” care about.

Fine, prediction markets are gambling. They are better gambling propositions than traditional oddsmaker books which have higher margins/house take baked into them.

Big political outcomes is a helpful prediction market service, even/because insiders can cheat by betting on the outcome. Midterm outcomes, or (4% chance) of $5000 dividend cheque by March 31 2007 are specific probabilities that reveal pure BS.

Some horrible contracts are whether a speech will include some word, or outcomes that have already been predetermined (Oscars) with insiders who know 100% betting vs the clueless. Other terrible contracts include US-Iran ceasefire status. Too ambiguous, and resolution process is prone to corruption.

Still, these markets are more useful predictors than polls, because experts are analyzing with money instead of bias.

They’re better predictors of what people think will happen.

That can correlate with what does happen, but they’re not the same thing. As much as Kalshi et al’s marketing would like to suggest otherwise. They’re not oracles or crystal balls.

They’re better predictors of what people think will happen.

They’re better predictors of what people that use them think will happen

That is some serious spin on a garbage gambling system that is easily manipulated. Like sports betting the goal is to try and get both sides to bet as evenly as possible and then take your cut off the top.

These markets are useful to take money from rubes and all your spin on their usefulness amounts to an endorsement that there is some value if you look hard enough. Hint: there isn’t.

Like sports betting the goal is to try and get both sides to bet as evenly as possible and then take your cut off the top.

False. The house just takes a percentage of all bets (usually 0.5%). The price (from 0 to $1) is what fully balances buyers/sellers. The house has no risk of loss. You can say that futures markets or options are gambling with large majority of participants eventually losing everything they put up, but that doesn’t mean that futures prices do not have predictive value.

You obviously don’t understand what you are commenting on, and there is no valid reason to call what I said, endorsement spin.

The goal is engagement. If you don’t understand drawing as many players on both sides of the bet is the most profitable for them then you must not understand how this really works.

You must be operating under some profound misconceptions of what modern bookies for sports betting do.

bookies put up their own money on the other side. adjust odds to try to even up the sides of a bet. Prediction markets are like a casino rake on a poker game. The casino is not gambling its own money.

That was how they used to do things, and I am sure there may be some people who still operate like this.

Modern bookies use juice which amounts to small fees to make profit, balance the books by encouraging betting on both sides, hedge their bets by passing on risk to larger bookies and/or betting sites, and of course ban players if they are winning too much.

The deregulated nature of this form of gambling results in a lot of corruption and predictive betting is even more problematic.

@Doomsider I mean - haven’t you also just described every stock exchange ever though? It’s the same mechanism with different names, and many people - apparently our President included - base a lot of real-world decisions on “how the market is doing”. So people are already willing to accept that level of sampling accuracy.

I am not a fan of derivatives and other financial instruments. The details may differ but they do definitely seem to rhyme with each other.

CBS is not a news organization.

No they don’t. The exist because the fairness doctrine was done away with by Reagan which means the dirtiest lying sons-of-bitches on the planet can get on “TV” and spew utter bullshit 24/7/365 - and call it “news”. Opinion and newsmongering have obliterated “just the facts”.

It’s how you keep the human monkeys riled up.

The system works as intended by those who set it up.

its ellison, peddling scams is a right wing M.O. and kalshi is chaired by trump’s not so favorite male child.

CBS fully embraced and placed an ad today about a political rival that was “forcing kids to get surgery” which is 100% illegal in the state. Truth is a person who was 19 got a surgery in Texas is trying to say a person they don’t know is forcing kids(illegal) to have surgeries in Ohio.

The hate is high. The lies are fruitfull… or Ellison would not fund them

ellison has bari weiss, a mouthpiece to take the flak.

Cool. So I could bet a hundred million on a candidate, my predictions will show up in cbs reporting (acting like a campaign since it influenced the report), then I spend 50 million on ads supporting my candidate…

Profit.

Prediction markets on sports is one thing but anything else should be illegal. This blows my mind people will bet on this