Polymarket launches probe after report alleges deceptive marketing

Polymarket told CBS News that it is auditing its promotional content after a Wall Street Journal investigation found the prediction market paid online content creators to produce videos that the newspaper said falsely showed customers winning a total of $1.9 million. The WSJ's findings, published Saturday, are based on interviews with social media content creators and an analysis of more than 1,100 TikTok videos from 10 creators. Most of the videos featured phony trades executed on dummy sites designed to resemble Polymarket, according to the Journal, which said the company's actions were part of a campaign to lure users to its offshore, unregulated platform. Polymarket also hired a marketing contractor to instruct so-called clippers, people who redistribute videos from creators to extend their reach, to repost the content, according to the media outlet's investigation. One social media video shows a college-aged student winning $100,000 after placing a $1,000 bet that President Trump would say the word "McDonald's" publicly sometime that month, according to the WSJ. But the actual trade on Polymarket's website shows 50 accounts bet that Mr. Trump would use the restaurant chain's name and that all of them lost, the paper reported. Other videos also misrepresented the earnings users could have made on parallel bets, the Journal's report found. …