\n
<\/p>\n
According to reporting from Semafor, the prediction market Kalshi sought to clean up apparent messes on Friday after some of its influencer relationships essentially made it look like it was paying to distribute conspiracy content online. Posts have now been removed at Kalshi\u2019s request. However, similar sponsored posts associated with Kalshi\u2019s competitor, Polymarket, do not appear to be disappearing. The news event that triggered the issue was the Los Angeles mayoral election. In California politics, there\u2019s this concept known to locals as the red mirage, in which Republicans tend to look dominant on election nights\u2014as if our deep blue state is finally having the change of heart much of America apparently fantasizes about. Republicans very much did look dominant on election night, owing to the fact that Republicans\u2019 voting patterns tend to get their votes counted first. But it\u2019s been a few days since the primary on June 2, and Republicans\u2019 hopes for their preferred outcomes are slowly fading. That\u2019s making people suspicious. And some of those people have branding relationships with the big prediction markets.<\/p>\n
Notice how the mail-in ballots that come in last second always end up voting Democrat Totally a coincidence, nothing to see here https:\/\/t.co\/6bYH6kvLov \u2014 Kangmin Lee | \uc774\uac15\ubbfc (@kangminlee) June 4, 2026 \u00a0 For instance, right-wing influencer Kangmin Lee posted an embed of a Polymarket post on X, and wrote \u201cNotice how the mail-in ballots that come in last second always end up voting Democrat,\u201d adding, \u201cTotally a coincidence, nothing to see here.\u201d At the bottom of that post it says \u201cPaid partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s another, similar sponsored post, this time from right-wing commentator Benny Johnson: The public has so little faith in California\u2019s elections that they just assume Democrats are going to dramatically rig it with questionable ballot counting DAYS after Election Day https:\/\/t.co\/yXOaY1HEUP \u2014 Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 4, 2026 \u00a0 \u201cThe public has so little faith in California\u2019s elections that they just assume Democrats are going to dramatically rig it with questionable ballot counting DAYS after Election Day,\u201d Johnson says. Johnson is wisely hedging by attributing the conspiracy theorizing to others, and he\u2019s also not entirely wrong about the public\u2019s attitude toward elections in California. It\u2019s common to have to wait weeks for election results here in California, which leads to this horrible phenomenon where you painstakingly figure out how you want to vote on dozens of issues, lose track of who or what you voted for, and then when the results come in\u2014perhaps sometime the following month\u2014you don\u2019t care anymore. There\u2019s no convincing reason it should be this way, and everyone I know hates it.<\/p>\n
But crucially, it doesn\u2019t seem (so far) to have been the result of anyone tampering with the votes. It would appear that, bit by bit, the election night lock conservative mayoral candidate and ex-reality TV villain Spencer Pratt had on second place is loosening, and he may soon be overtaken completely by Nithya Raman, a progressive\u2014not because the votes are changing, but because they\u2019re being counted in slow motion. For unrelated reasons, only the first- and second-place candidates make it to the ballot in November. My estimate yesterday was that Raman needed to win what was left over Pratt by 12-13% . Today, after this batch (which she won by 21%), my estimate is that she has to win what is left over Pratt by 9-10%. So she is certainly on track. (image or embed) \u2014 Taniel (@taniel.bsky.social) June 5, 2026 at 5:24 PM This leads to incongruities: As of this writing, the latest vote tally shows Pratt with 28.2% of votes, and Raman with 24.9%. Nonetheless, over on Polymarket, Raman\u2019s odds of advancing to the second round of voting are now at 95%, and Pratt\u2019s are at 6%. That\u2019s life in a deep blue city (Spencer Pratt says he will leave LA if he doesn\u2019t become mayor, by the way).<\/p>\n
Now, according to Semafor, Kalshi has requested that paid influencers remove posts \u201cthat sowed doubt about the integrity of the Los Angeles mayoral election.\u201d Semafor says one such post, which has since been deleted, was from the account \u201cGunther Eagleman,\u201d which belongs to a right-wing influencer named David J. Freeman, who has 1.7 million followers. Freeman wrote, \u201cIs CA cheating to get Spencer Pratt out?\u201d and embedded a Kalshi post, according to Semafor. One approving quote of that post\u2014which is now broken\u2014said, \u201cYes they are cheating.\u201d Another since-deleted X post from right-wing influencer Matt Van Swol, read (again, according to Semafor) \u201cI need someone to explain to me how EVERY SINGLE VOTE that comes in \u2018late\u2019 to California \u2026nearly 100% of them\u2026Go to ANYONE but Spencer Pratt.\u201d<\/p>\n
One can only assume that, upon seeing that these sponsored posts have been removed, conspiracy theorists are surely packing up their yarn walls and finding more productive ways to spend their time. Semafor says Kalshi and Polymarket fund \u201chundreds\u201d of influencers. In a report on Friday, Politico found that, according to transaction records it had reviewed, an executive at Polymarket sent at least $350,000 to influencers via a personal PayPal account throughout last year and in January of this year. Regarding the now-deleted posts, Kalshi spokesperson Dani Lever told Semafor it had \u201casked these to be taken down, as they violate our affiliate marketing policies.\u201d Polymarket did not get back to Semafor. Gizmodo also reached out to Polymarket for clarity about its policy regarding these sponsorships or any statement at all about the posts. We will update this article if we hear back. According to reporting from Semafor, the prediction market Kalshi sought to clean up apparent messes on Friday after some of its influencer relationships essentially made it look like it was paying to distribute conspiracy content online. Posts have now been removed at Kalshi\u2019s request. However, similar sponsored posts associated with Kalshi\u2019s competitor, Polymarket, do not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[676],"tags":[1246,1817,1706,999,1707,1708],"class_list":["post-5103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-ai","tag-california","tag-elections","tag-kalshi","tag-los-angeles","tag-polymarket","tag-prediction-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"