The “truth machine” is lying to you

(Photo by Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan says his company is a “global truth machine.” Coplan has argued that Polymarket is “the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now“ and creates “an information landscape with less sensationalism and more truth.” In June 2025, Coplan announced a partnership with X because the “two top truth seeking apps on the internet are stronger together.”

More recently, Polymarket, in an apparent effort to increase engagement, has been using X to promote brazen misinformation.

On August 10, an official Polymarket account on X posted a graphic falsely claiming that, in the United States, babies receive 72 injections. President Trump, according to the Polymarket post, was ending this practice.

This graphic, which was previously posted by the White House in January, is false, according to multiple independent fact checkers. PolitiFact, which rated the graphic “False,” reported that babies “received anywhere from 12 to 30 shots before their second birthday depending on the use of combination vaccines and annual COVID-19 and flu vaccines.”

Trump also personally claimed on Truth Social that the United States required “72 ‘jabs’ for perfectly healthy babies.” PolitiFact found that figure “takes into account 18 years of recommended vaccines, including an annual flu and COVID-19 shot, and assumes that each vaccine dose would be given as a separate injection.”

FactCheck.org similarly found the claim was incorrect. It noted that “a person could complete the U.S. childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule as of early 2025 while receiving less than two dozen shots and oral vaccines.” The claim also failed fact checks by STAT News and CNN.

This is not an isolated incident.

On August 3, Polymarket’s main X account posted that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that he would require an ID to make purchases at city-owned grocery stores.

This claim is false. It was never “revealed” by Mamdani or anyone else. It was a baseless rumor that spread widely on right-wing media outlets, according to the Associated Press. “When we’re talking about a city-run grocery store, one in each borough, which by the way, you do not need an ID to shop at, no matter what you’ve just heard in the news of today,” Mamdani said during an August 3 media interview.

The false claim, which was not corrected, garnered 19.6 million views on X. Polymarket used the attention to promote its prediction market on whether Mamdani would open a city-owned grocery store by December 31.

The tactic reveals that Polymarket’s business is not “truth.” Polymarket seeks to maximize attention for its markets. That frequently involves spreading false information.

Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment.

A market for misinformation

Popular Information identified numerous other occasions where Polymarket has spread misinformation on social media platforms. On August 8, for example, Polymarket posted on X, “JUST IN: WNBA Commissioner announces the league is meeting to review what a woman is, after multiple former NBA stars announced plans to join the league.” Polymarket used the post to promote a market about whether Enes Kanter Freedom, a former NBA player who claims he will enter the WNBA draft, will be selected in 2027.

But this is not accurate. The Polymarket post seemingly refers to an internal memo sent to teams by WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert. The memo, obtained by the Associated Press, said that the topic of “transgender athlete participation in women’s basketball” would “be discussed further by a task force of team presidents and general managers at a previously scheduled meeting.” But there was no announcement and no planned review of “what a woman is.”

On July 3, a Polymarket account promoted a post from Trump claiming that the U.S. spent significantly more on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) than other countries. The post claims that the U.S. spent $999 billion on NATO.

But this is not true. The annual NATO budget was around €4.6 billion in 2025, and is estimated to be up to €5.3 billion (or over $6 billion) in 2026. According to NATO, “[a]ll allies contribute to funding NATO using an agreed cost share formula derived from the Gross National Income of member countries.” The U.S. is among the top contributors, financing around 14.9% of the budget from 2026 through 2027. But many other countries pay similar amounts, including France (10%), the United Kingdom (10%), and Germany (14.9%).

The graphic posted by Trump and promoted by Polymarket is seemingly referring to the total defense spending per country. According to NATO estimates, the U.S. spent $980 billion on defense in 2025.

Polymarket has also promoted misleading information about elections. On June 1, Polymarket posted that Los Angeles mayoral candidate Karen Bass “surge[d] in the Los Angeles Mayoral Election odds — & tomorrow is Election Day.” Polymarket stated that there was a “64% chance” she was re-elected.

But June 2 was only the primary election for the Los Angeles mayoral race. To win the election outright, a candidate has to receive over 50% of the primary vote. (Bass did not receive 50% of the vote during the primary and will therefore be running in the general election in November.) The Polymarket odds included in the post were not for the primary election, but instead for the overall election winner.

Polymarket’s checkered history

Polymarket’s habit of posting false or misleading information on social media is a long-established pattern.

In a March review of Polymarket’s social media accounts — which have millions of combined followers — the New York Times identified hundreds of posts containing false or misleading information.

Frequently, the subjects of Polymarket’s misinformation are opponents of the Trump administration. (Polymarket is connected to Trump through Donald Trump Jr., who has invested in the company and serves as an unpaid advisor.)

In November 2025, for example, Polymarket made a misleading post about Mamdani, who was running for New York City mayor at the time. The post, made on Election Day, said that Mamdani’s name would appear twice on the ballot.

The post did not mention that candidates’ names often appear multiple times on New York City ballots because they can be nominated by multiple parties. Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa’s name also appeared twice on the ballot. Regardless, Polymarket’s post set off a conspiracy theory that the election was rigged in Mamdani’s favor.

Another frequent target for MAGA and Polymarket is Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN). In a post from December, Polymarket pushed conspiracy theories about how Omar’s net worth has increased since 2019. The post did not mention that her net worth now includes the assets of her husband, who she married in 2020.

While liberal politicians are often the subject of the misleading posts, Polymarket has also posted misinformation about other prominent figures.

In January, for example, Polymarket posted on X that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had advised young people to work at McDonald’s or Palantir before starting their own companies.

Within a few hours, Bezos replied with his own post saying, “Nope. Not sure why [P]olymarket made this up.”

In fact, Polymarket’s claim seems to be a distortion of an answer Bezos gave during an interview at Italian Tech Week months earlier. Bezos actually said, “I always advise to young people: Go work at a best-practices company somewhere where you can learn a lot of basic fundamental things [like] how to hire really well, how to interview, etc.”

Bezos did not mention working for Palantir or McDonald’s.