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Comment by laurentiurad | Hacker News Reader

yea just throw the CEO of microsoft in jail too because illegal transactions are set via Xbox live.

Betting markets are legally required to have KYC. If you or I operated a casino illegally we would ABSOLUTELY be thrown in jail.

Do you seriously think fraudulent Xbox live transactions are on the same level of the heinous insider trading going on in betting markets?

Or do you just think C-suite should be legally immune from accountability overall?

Polymarket's decentralized and anonymous nature was an intentional choice by its creator precisely because it enables illegal, anonymous transactions.

How is the ceo responsible for operating under the current legal framework which allows his platform not to require KYC? Unless they are breaking the law, why should anyone arrest him?

It's the responsibility of the lawmakers to make them illegal or force them to do kyc.

If you fantasize about China or Russia way of doing things you should move there.

He is breaking the law, and was under DOJ investigation for it until he bribed the president's son to call them off.

If he's breaking the law and there is proof to that, then he will and should be arrested.

From where has it entered your mind that they don't do KYC?

Anybody can send anonymous threats, that has nothing to do with any betting company, unless they are sent through that platform.

Trivial to make a polymarket account without KYC

And what is the relevance to the death threats mentioned in the article?

unironically yes, I think with the huge payday they get for being responsible for Microsoft they should also carry an equivalent responsibility when they cause social harms. Billionaires have gotten way too comfortable.

I hate them too, but arresting them for something that they simply cannot prevent due to technical limitations, since they cannot scan in realtime all the conversations happening on their platform, is Russian-style government action, not rule of law.

If you can't do a thing safely and without harm, perhaps you should not be doing the thing? It blows my mind the number of tech people who just say "it's too hard to do it safely and without harm so we'll just do it anyway and externalize the damage to other people." Lazy, greedy, amoral douche bags.

Cars? Airplanes? Motorcycles? Child birth? Life itself? Nothing could be done 100% safely and 100% without harm. Obsession with safety is what helps governments become totalitarian even in traditionally-democratic countries. Obsession with safety is the reason terrorists win.

Edit: Personally I think betting on war is immoral and should be condemned by all sane people, but saying that everything needs 100% safety and 100% no harm is very naive.

The items you've listed are all quite safe and palatable in their harm when contrasted with the benefits they bring. I'm not seeing the same picture when looking at polymarket - I don't see the great gain we're accomplishing as a society in exchange for an addicting platform that breeds organized crime. Some inventions are just plain dangerous and a bad idea.

Before they built the platform this danger did not exist. There is no law of nature that says massive social media platforms that are too large to moderate effectively need to exist.

If they have built a thing they can't maintain that isn't bully for them and we should feel sorry that their best efforts aren't working well enough - it's proof that that thing (or at least the way they built that thing) isn't feasible.

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