You can bet on anything in prediction markets.

And that has led many people, as so many of us have lately, to become, in a way, conspiracy theorists.

Like the White House press briefing that ended abruptly (weirdly?) just before the 65-minute mark set by prediction markets.

Or the extremely strange harassment happening to NCAA athletes when Kalshi still allowed transfer markets.

But now the creator economy has been mixed up in the scandals, when a MrBeast editor, Artem Kaptur, traded on non-public information on Kalshi and was subsequently banned and fined.

And there are so many bets on there where people know the outcome. Are you telling me none of the $437,000 bet on this season’s Love is Blind engagements are people who work on the show when there’s a 92.5x return on these bets?

So in this edition, I’ll dive into prediction markets: how they work, whether they’re legal, and how content creators can keep themselves from getting sued into the ground.

Also in this edition:

🧑🏽‍💼 Section 230 Needs to be Reformed, Not Eliminated (Thoughts Are My Own)

🌮 TikTok Users Love Recipes

📸 Snapchat Gets Snappy With a New Awards Show

📻 Podcast Finally Surpass AM/FM Radio

⛳️ Truth Social May Go Private

💪🏼 Jobs from Netflix, SpinMaster, and Fox Sports

🎭 …and a dank meme from yours truly!

Let’s get into it.

TLDR:

Pop quiz: what famous person is an advisor to both of the most popular prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket?

Dangit, the gif already gave it away… It’s the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.

And this fact speaks loudly around the shaky legal standing of both of these multi-billion dollar behemoths. They need that White House protection.

Both grew exceptionally quickly by allowing users to gamble on more things faster without inconvenient casino gambling laws.

Technically, Kalshi is the only legal U.S. prediction market since it registered with the CFTC as not a gambling site, even though it very, very clearly is, but a futures market hedge platform.

Yes, they still get away with betting on the outcomes of reality shows with that excuse.

Meanwhile, Polymarket is doing it the good old fashioned way: just being a crypto-exchange outside of U.S. jurisdiction. But because of that, you can bet on more stuff that has far shakier grounds in terms of ‘non-predictable outcomes’.

The length of a speech can be controlled. As can news events. And pop culture announcements.

Especially on crypto-first Polymarket, these bets can also be easily obscured.

And that brings us to the news of the week, where a MrBeast editor cashed in on betting on MrBeast videos where he had insider information.

But this is where it gets crazy: he was only caught because he wasn’t careful. He had bets going through one profile where he chose to win far too often when the odds were far too stacked against him.

Any Vegas card counter will tell you that’s a poor way to grift.

So internet nerds like me live on Polymarket watching huge money go into supposedly unpredictable wagers and win a ton of money.

Are some of them YOLOing their 401k? Certainly. But I’m guessing many of them are people with insider knowledge getting a few big scores off of normies who think the platform plays fair.

So what does this have to do with the creator economy?

Much like Matt Damon’s infamous Crypto.com commercial, any terminally online soul knows that Logan Paul has been a huge Polymarket marketer and iShowSpeed has promoted Kalshi, along with hundreds, if not thousands of meaningful mid-tier creators.

And despite their former embrace of crypto, the Super Bowl banned ads from these platforms.

Personally, I have no problem with creators promoting products they don’t use. It’s hard to make money out there.

But this one feels uniquely tricky.

In other words, by all means! Take that Polymarket deal! But this wouldn’t be ‘The Creator Rep’ newsletter if I didn’t say the following: make sure your lawyer has the indemnification clauses as air tight as it gets.

If these markets go south, there will be a lot of fingers pointed, and you don’t want them in you or your client’s direction.

The reason why social platforms are able to exist without lawsuits-by-the-minute is from a 30 year old rule in the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

In short, Section 230 states that if you make a piece of software, then users post illegal stuff on through that software, the software creators don’t take full liability for that illegal stuff.

In other words, the user is more liable than the platform.

Let me restate the timeline: this was written in 1996. Early AOL days. No real social media yet.

So through this, every platform has been able to moderate as much or little as they want on their platform and just claim Section 230 protection if something goes awry.

As the testimonies of Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri over the past few weeks have show, things went very, very awry.

Growth at huge human costs, teen depression and suicide, the death of objective truth, all can be traced back to, in part, Section 230.

And given this, I can’t join Representatives Patronis or Whitehouse calling for its repeal.

Here’s why:

What’s far scarier to me than social media networks allowing users to destroy society through their platforms is the idea that these tech leaders will be the only CEOs we’ll ever have again.

And a repeal of Section 230 would all but ensure that future.

Section 230 is absolutely necessary for young platforms who don’t have the budgets of Meta or Google for gigantic moderation and litigation teams.

Trust me. I worked for one at Mobcrush. We were taking down stuff ourselves as they were reported.

And the really scary stuff isn’t the biased algorithms or the inability for your Uncle to know that video of Clinton kissing Epstein was AI.

It’s a world where social media sites destroy traditional journalism, then Section 230 is repealed, so they take the only logical step: heavily moderate who gets to be on their platforms ever again.

This means anyone who could be deemed even a bit controversial may never be heard from again.

And I imagine some of the big verticals would be: medical creators, finance creators, pundits, activists, LGBTQA+ commentators, or anyone that’s young.

So I’m all for repeal and replace, but ‘replace’ needs to keep some Section 230 protections so platforms can make mistakes, but be held accountable for large failures within their systems to protect their users, as I would argue every major platform has done in the past.

But we also need that also lean towards freer speech for more voices, more competition in the social media ecosystem, and allow information to flow freely globally.

What creators, brands, governments, and platforms are making waves this week in the name of fortune, fame, and fun?

🌮 Admit it: you’ve made the TikTok pasta. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. A study of 406 TikTok users found 97% have followed a recipe on the app. That’s a lot of overhead pan shots…

📸 Ready to win a Snappy? Snapchat will now have their own awards show honoring the best Snapchat creators on March 31. ‘Best Thirst Trap Disguised as a Snap Discover Show’?

📻 In ‘I thought that happened a decade ago’ news, podcasts have finally surpassed AM/FM talk radio in listening time according to Edison Research. My apologies to drive time radio crews pouring their heart and soul into trying to sound energetic at 5:30am.

⛳️ Truth Social, the far-right social media network best known for Trump’s daily thoughts, may go private in a strategy shift away from Trump Media & Technology Group. Then the only thing more private than the company will be anyone posting on there who isn’t Donald Trump!

Creative Evaluation Lead, Video, Netflix

I did a double-take with this job title, but upon diving into the post, it became clear this is an ‘AI process evaluator’ job. If you live and breath how AI technology is going to change creative production workflows, and want to execute across some of the coolest IP in the streaming world, this is a very well-paid way to do it!

Digital Content Creator, Paw Patrol [Contract], SpinMaster

I have a 5 and 6 year old, and if I got a job making videos for Paw Patrol I would officially be the coolest dad on Earth. But this is particularly interesting, because there’s already a lot of ‘non-official’ Paw Patrol content on YouTube getting incredible views. This feels like a great role to use case-studies from internet creators to bring those popular formats in-house.

Social Video Freelancer - World Cup, Fox Sports

The World Cup is now officially so close that there’s last-second social media hiring happening! This role doesn’t have great budgets, but if you’re a soccer fan, this is going to give you access that others are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get. And you’ll get insane views on your content, which is always good for the portfolio!