I went to a screening of Alex Gibney’s Elon doc and wrote a review. www.npr.org/2026/09/11/n...

From DOGE to space lasers, Alex Gibney peels back the many layers of Elon Musk

In the Oscar-winning filmmaker's latest documentary, director Alex Gibney investigates the rise of Elon Musk and says what's behind Musk's success are distressing truths.

npr.org

"It sounds like Musk doesn't like the documentary, so he wants to do whatever he can to shut it down and intimidate distributors. It would be a much more impoverished democracy if we weren't allowed to make documentaries about public figures that were critical of them." www.npr.org/2026/09/10/g...

Elon Musk threatens to sue over Gibney documentary's "space lasers" claim

The tech billionaire's attorney has put documentarian Alex Gibney and his production company on legal notice, claiming the Oscar-winning director defamed Musk in his nearly four-hour documentary.

npr.org

I saw a screening of Alex Gibney’s Musk yesterday, and I enjoyed it (except for the creepy deepfake of Musk) Most of what’s covered has been well documented, but something that did stand out to me were texts Musk sent to Ashley St. Clair after the WSJ’s reporting on Musk’s recreational drug use.

It's interesting that Dodd-Frank reforms after 2008 brought "swaps" under CFTC’s watch to close a loophole for risky black market investing. And now NJ says that closed loophole has become Kalshi's own loophole for avoiding state gambling laws.

As the Lindsay Clancy jury deliberates anonymous bettors on Polymarket are wagering five-figure sums on what the verdict might be

NEW: The CFTC has launched a probe into prediction market "mention markets" as a category, where people bet millions on whether President Trump, sportscasters, executives on earning calls say a word or not. www.npr.org/2026/08/13/n...

Feds probe 'mention markets' amid White House Kalshi controversy

Betting on what people say is becoming an increasingly popular category of prediction market sites. Now, federal officials have opened a probe examining whether those markets are a magnet for manipula...

npr.org

When Elon took over Twitter he told investors he'd triple ad revenue within 5 years. It's now been almost four years... and he's wiped out 2/3rds of the ad revenue (basically revealed in footnotes to SpaceX's earnings).

Techdirt@techdirt.com · 2mo ago

SpaceX’s Earnings Show Elon Wiped Out Two-Thirds Of Twitter’s Ad Business When SpaceX filed for its IPO, we went through the S-1 to point out just how far off the mark Elon Musk's... https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/10/spacexs-earnings-show-elon-wiped-out-two-thirds-of-twitters-ad-business/

Father of 12-year-old cancer patient on prediction markets introducing clinical trial betting: "What seemed to be missed in the CEO statements was the fact that there were going to be patients on the other side of these bets” www.npr.org/2026/08/07/n...

Kalshi and Polymarket bets on clinical trials criticized as 'ghastly'

Researchers warn betting on clinical trials could incentivize insider trading and interfere with drug development. But Kalshi and Polymarket say they provide valuable information to patients.

npr.org

Both Kalshi & Polymarket odds of El-Sayed winning were more than 90% and both sites "called" the race for El-Sayed, who won by less than 1 percentage point It's reminding me of Spencer Pratt's momentum on the sites & how prediction market traders over-index internet hype, which real voters do not

Trump’s media company today began selling early access to the president’s posts on Truth Social for up to $100k a month to financial institutions. I talked to former SEC lawyers, who see the service as a violation of insider trading laws. And a Wall Street executive, who told me:

Example of a prediction market paying out for unreality: A live announcer mistook Matt Damon for Brad Pitt during the World Cup final, some outlets erroneously reported it, and a Kalshi attendance market resolved yes he attended, when he in fact was not there. Here’s why this happened:

Kalshi's standoff with Wisconsin over election betting could be a preview of the next big prediction market fight. Election integrity experts fear situations like an election poll worker slowing the count or undercounting in order to cash in on a prediction market bet. www.npr.org/2026/07/27/n...

Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

The spat between the leading prediction market company and a key battleground state could be a glimpse into the next major fight between states and the fast-growing industry.

npr.org

Wisconsin Elections Commission warning voters about using Kalshi and Polymarket ahead of midterms: “Voters who place bets on elections and then try to vote in that election may be subject to voter qualification … and could also result in a referral to the District Attorney”

This was a really great discussion, give it a listen!

Bobby Allyn@bobbyallyn.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Had fun hopping on @chrislhayes.bsky.social’s great podcast Why Is This Happening to chat prediction market mania, how we got here and where all this crazy-making madness is heading open.spotify.com/episode/3mKo...

Had fun hopping on @chrislhayes.bsky.social’s great podcast Why Is This Happening to chat prediction market mania, how we got here and where all this crazy-making madness is heading open.spotify.com/episode/3mKo...

The Betting Craze with Bobby Allyn

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast · Episode

open.spotify.com

NEW from me: Kalshi says it’s not a sports gambling app. Since the World Cup started, it’s taken in $40 billion in sports bets, 10 times more than what DraftKings and FanDuel are expected to see. www.npr.org/2026/07/17/n...

Kalshi says it's not a sportsbook even as World Cup bets surge

The betting site Kalshi emerged as a dominant sports betting platform during the World Cup. But the company avoids billions of dollars in taxes by insisting it is not a sports gambling operator.

npr.org

White House teleprompter operator as Kalshi Mention Market sharp is a designation as 2026 as they come www.npr.org/2026/07/16/n...

Federal officials probe whether White House teleprompter profited off Trump's words

It's the first known instance of officials investigating suspected insider trading on a prediction market from inside the White House.

npr.org

NEW: Rep. Krishnamoorthi sent a letter to Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan today requesting information about its paid influencer partnerships where election denialism was amplified. krishnamoorthi.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

nothing says just how destigmatized and normalized gambling has become like this stat: American adults are more likely to place a bet than read a book

Meanwhile on Kalshi, traders made $879k betting Platner would drop out today and lost $907k betting he wouldn’t, according to internal market data. That’s just for today. The market overall had $11.5M traded on the question of when Platner would withdraw from the race.

Matt Levine: Prediction markets are “falsehood machines, in the sense that they give people incentives to make bets and then distort reality to make those bets pay off...Prediction markets can make it harder to know what is true.” www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

Purchasing bots to juice Spotify streams for a Kalshi payout on what song will be No. 1 “Spotify ultimately adjusted its charts to account for the discrepancy, culling over 500,000 artificial streams…The process was not immediate, though, and Kalshi had already resolved the market to award traders”

Kate Knibbs@knibbs.bsky.social · 3mo ago

NEW: Spotify charts are getting botted, and a top Kalshi trader is convinced it's part of a market manipulation scheme: www.wired.com/story/spotif...

Sources: Mark Zuckerberg met with Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour about a possible takeover last year, before directing Meta employees to build a prediction market app (Bobby Allyn/NPR) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

NEW: Meta considered buying Kalshi before developing its own prediction market app www.npr.org/2026/06/30/n...

Meta considered buying Kalshi before developing its own prediction market app

Mark Zuckerberg met with Kalshi's CEO last year about a potential deal, but talks did not move forward. Now Meta is making its own prediction market app.

npr.org

The Rick Rubin Polymarket ad ends with fine print: “Trading is not available in all jurisdictions. Check local regulations before trading.” (Checks local regulations) Ah yes, trading on Polymarket dot com has been banned in the US since 2022, got it

Musk says not a single person has died due to him axing USAID. Sadly, part of my job involves tracking aid spending. So here’s a thread with just some of the people who lost their lives because of USAID cuts

Meta is planning its very own prediction market app, as @mikeisaac.bsky.social scooped yesterday I got some internal Meta docs that give more detail on the app and how it plans to use ai from market creation to how markets resolve, etc., all while wagering "play money" www.npr.org/2026/06/24/n...

Meta plans to release AI-powered prediction market app, documents show

The company is building an app separate from Facebook and Instagram where people can wager on the outcome of real-world events, using "play money."

npr.org

I’ve seen internal Meta docs that have used the codename “Antwerp” to describe this product, in addition to Arena. It’s being described as a rebuild of its 2020 prediction app experiment.

rat king 🐀 👑 @mikeisaac.bsky.social · 3mo ago

News: Meta is currently building a prediction markets app to rival Polymarket and Kalshi, according to sources the app, currently called "Arena," will be a standalone offering and was ordered up by Mark Zuckerberg www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/t...

Spencer Pratt was part of this very online feedback loop where he kept going viral on X, his odds were always bullish on prediction markets and traders were obsessed with him, so I got access to Kalshi API data and ran the numbers.

Polymarket & Kalshi are both now cracking down on paid partnership posts that use betting odds to allege election fraud, after a surge of unsubstantiated claims about the LA mayoral race circulated on X, @bobbyallyn.bsky.social and @jjoffeblock.bsky.social report www.npr.org/2026/06/07/n...

Kalshi and Polymarket crack down on paid influencers claiming election fraud

Influencers are using prediction market odds to sow doubt in vote counting, in some cases in posts paid for by the companies themselves.

npr.org