The "truth machine" is paying for election lies
Polymarket, one of the dominant players in the prediction market industry, promotes itself as a source of objective truth. In 2024, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan called his company a “global truth machine“ and bragged the company would be “actually solving misinformation.” After Polymarket became the official prediction market of X, Coplan said the partnership joined together the “two top truth seeking apps on the internet.”
However, as Semafor first reported, in the wake of the California primary election last Tuesday, Polymarket has sponsored posts from far-right influencers on X pushing election conspiracies and disinformation. Popular Information has uncovered a network of at least 16 influencers1, with a collective audience of 13 million, publishing election-related misinformation in posts sponsored by Polymarket.
The conspiracies involve the Los Angeles mayoral primary. Like other California races, all candidates compete in a single primary and the top two candidates advance to the general election. Early returns on election night showed incumbent Karen Bass (D) leading the field and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt (R) in second place. Pratt has gained a following through viral AI-generated videos depicting him as Batman and Bass as the Joker.
But California’s vote-counting process has been slow and later returns have favored another candidate, Nithya Raman (D), over Pratt. Many Californians vote by mail, and these ballots take longer to count. Based on the breakdown of the mail-in ballots, most analysts expect Raman, not Pratt, to advance to the general.
In numerous Polymarket-sponsored posts, far-right influencers, without evidence, claim that Raman’s improving fortunes are evidence of fraud. Former InfoWars correspondent Owen Shroyer, who has over 470,000 followers on X, posted that “California just keeps counting until the Democrat wins.” The post was labeled as a “paid partnership” with Polymarket.
Previously, Shroyer was a named defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by the family of a child killed at Sandy Hook and was found liable by default. Shroyer was also sentenced to 60 days in jail for his role in the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. “In the months prior to January 6, Shroyer spread election disinformation paired with violent rhetoric to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers,” prosecutors wrote. “Shroyer helped create January 6.”
Another right-wing content creator, Benny Johnson, wrote in a Polymarket-sponsored post that the declining odds for Pratt reflected people’s belief that “Democrats are going to dramatically rig it.” Johnson, a serial fabulist, has repeatedly pushed false claims about the LA mayoral in recent days, including the claim that California has created a “system of fraud specifically designed to manufacture votes in races you need to win and make the fraud untraceable.” In another post, Johnson said the “election cheat machine in California is so wildly unconstitutional and fraudulent it’s not even funny.” Beyond LA, Johnson asserted that in California, an overwhelmingly Democratic state, it was impossible to believe that Republican “Steve Hilton isn’t in the lead for Governor.”
In other cases, Polymarket sponsored posts by pseudonymous accounts with large followings pushing disinformation about the LA mayoral election. Posts sponsored by Polymarket asserted the LA election officials were “openly cheating,” “SCAMMING Spencer Pratt,” and “rigging it.”
Many of the Polymarket-sponsored influencers also frequently post bigoted content. Kangmin Lee, for example, posts about election conspiracies and disparaging posts about Black Americans. “Everyone is feeling the black fatigue,” Lee posted on June 7.
Polymarket’s sponsorship of election disinformation is consistent with its overall approach of using sensationalism on X to drive interest in its product. Front Office Sports reports that Polymarket and Kalshi “post on social media like they’re troll accounts“ and “are shitposting their way to legitimacy.”
Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment.
Kalshi removes some, but not all, sponsored election misinformation
According to the CEO of Kalshi, Polymarket’s chief competitor, the company is “replacing debate, subjectivity, and talk with markets, accuracy, and truth.” But Kalshi has also been sponsoring posts by right-wing influencers with misinformation about the LA mayoral election.
In one Kalshi-sponsored post, @GuntherEagleman, an account with 1.7 million followers, wrote “They are stealing it, aren’t they?”.
Kalshi told Semafor that these posts violate their “affiliate marketing policies“ and it has asked the creators to remove them. The @GuntherEagleman post, and a couple of similar sponsored posts, have been deleted.
But other posts raising doubts about the California electoral system remain. “We should all fly to LA and vote for Pratt,” @WallStreetMav wrote in a Kalshi-sponsored post on June 2. “Nothing can stop us, they don’t require voter ID.” In a June 5 post, @WallStreetMav asked, “Has anyone found a Democrat statistician or mathematician who can provide a legitimate explanation for how out of 24,000 ballots, Spencer Pratt received ZERO?”
That post is based on a thoroughly debunked rumor. The LA Times explained, “Voting data pushed out by the Associated Press came as two separate updates one minute apart, with Bass’ and Raman’s votes in the first and Pratt’s in the second.”
George Santos under investigation, loses sponsorship deal
Pushing election misinformation is not the only scandal the prediction market industry has been dealing with recently.
Last week, Kalshi reported former Congressman George Santos (R), who was convicted of fraud and then had his sentence commuted by Trump, to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for “suspicious trades“ made ahead of Trump’s February State of the Union address. Santos “boasted he’d be going to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, then bet against his own attendance.” Ultimately Santos did not attend the event, blaming a flight delay.
The Santos case is an example of just how easy it is for insiders to game prediction market bets. On his own podcast in March, Santos called prediction markets “easily manipulable,” but argued “It is not a crime to do prediction market.” According to Santos, “there will always be advantaged players in this game and it’s very hard to understand who they are.”
In response to Santos’ referral to the DOJ, Polymarket announced George Santos would no longer be a paid content creator for the company.
How legitimate is a company that supports George Santos as a paid content creator?
It doesn't matter who or what gets destroyed in the insatiable desire for money.