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I believe @Gabrielle has resolved this market in accordance with @IsaacKing's original intentions, so I do not believe this is a misresolution.

Nonetheless, I believe this outcome is still incorrect. In my mind, many of the features we've implemented in the last year were intentionally designed to restrict whalebait (e.g. introducing unranked markets, algo changes on feed/browse page, etc).

@SG It seemed to me that the specific changes that Isaac was looking for were

banning or implimenting a spending cap on these sorts of markets

and neither of those were done. In addition, Isaac said earlier that the changes that were done “don't by themselves have a large effect”.

But I agree in general that the team did a lot to change how whalebait markets worked.

Yeah, those feel like nudges to disincentivize betting in them, but they're not really a "restriction". You could argue that "whalebait markets are restricted to being unranked", but I feel like that's a somewhat unnatural interpretation. The dynamics of the market itself are not restricted in any way, just its discoverability.

I certainly should have defined the criteria better in advance, that was my bad.

Hell yeah! 1609% gains! But still far from enough to cover my eurovision losses 🫣

resolve?

My current impression of the situation is that Manifold implemented some minor disincentives like de-ranking and unsubsidizing, but these disincentives don't by themselves have a large effect. The primary reason we see fewer and smaller whalebait markets is due to shifting community norms, with people seeing how gambling can be harmful and staying away from it. As such I think this should resolve NO. Open to counterarguments.

@IsaacKing I basically agree. Seems more like "discouraging and de-emphasizing" and less like "ban or restrict". "Go have fun, we're not helping" isn't really a restriction.

@EvanDaniel This is wrong.. these markets are being unlisted too - the reason you don’t see them anymore is because as soon as they get any traction they are unlisted and become impossible to find

If the restrictions were removed there would be just as much whale bait as early last year

“Go have fun, we’re not helping” .. and your friends will only be able to find the market if you link it to them

@Gen Wait, we are? In practice or in theory? All of them or just some, and what's the dividing line? Because there are a lot that are still listed, including some that are ranked and/or subsidized.

https://manifold.markets/browse?topic=selfresolving

@EvanDaniel There are >5k unlisted markets, the fact that some make it past is indicative of just how much non predictive spam there would be if it wasn't happening at all. I'd have to check the guidelines to see what it has been updated to say, but iirc it is something like "mods should unlist anything that is low effort non-predictive fun", which includes the gambling conflip markets etc. that we used to see every day

edit: I think most mods just unsub/unrank if they are unsure about unlisting, which is probably also why some go without being unlisted - most of the harm is avoided

@Gen Hmm. Do you think unlisting should count as a significant enough restriction to resolve this to YES?

@IsaacKing Yes probably, as reflected by my position - delisting is akin to a shadowban. There could be arguments around whether it is "consistently enforced", but someone can probably pull the data to see what % is delisted/ranked/subsidized/etc.

mods, please resolve.

@anon @IsaacKing is active, I imagine he's deciding

@MartinRandall ah no hurry

@anon Sorry, I had about 170 EOY markets to resolve, I've gotten through about half so far. Working on the rest.

@IsaacKing I was being a bit rude in retrospect don't worry about it at all

I won ~5k mana in two (one, two) whalebait markets last week. They're not going anywhere. They're a type of game that can be simulated using a market, just like many other games, and the perverse incentives they create have been numbed down by Manifold by unranking, removing house subsidies, bonuses, and in some cases unlisting them.

These markets are a good learning tool if someone is interested in using them so. What manifold should do is not ban these markets, but reduce their impact on metrics that most users care about (profit for instance) - i.e. i do not like that my profit includes whalebait profit, and I'd prefer the UI to show my profit on non-whalebait markets by default.

@firstuserhere Didn't manifold already do that? Don't markets which are marked as non-predictive no longer count for profit numbers (at least when it comes to the leagues)?

@firstuserhere The profit shouldn’t count for leaderboards, that’s for sure

I think this ought resolve yes; it has been at least several weeks since I saw whale bait markets in search or on the front page (probably longer, but I am only confident up to weeks).

Further, I'm quite confident if I ever did, as soon as I posted it in discord it would get tagged as such, it would be hidden, and subsidies would be removed.

@RobertCousineau I'm not sure that unlisting them is a significant enough restriction to count for this market. The description talks about banning them entirely or implementing a spending cap. Unlisting them doesn't prevent someone from losing a lot of money on one.

@IsaacKing we're also unranking them and removing house subsidies. Up to you what counts.

@IsaacKing a couple points:

1. At an object level, whalebait markets are a non-issue anymore. The restrictions appear to have worked well enough to reduce the incentive to participate it them (and therefore cause a problem gambling on them). Any of the currently existing whalebait markets have much lower trade volume than the days of WvM, The Market, 69%, etc, even while DAU's/Mana Supply/Number of "whales" have all grown signficantly. Whether or not you would have expected implementing guilds and making whalebait profit not count towards them (alongside removing them from search and removing house subsidies/trader subsidies) to work, it has worked!

2. On the note of referencing your description, when someone brought up the restrictions they did actually put into place you simply asked "were they ever being consistently shadowbanned?". The answer is, they are! It feels like a odd if after I say "Yes :)", you decide that is not sufficient.

3. They did restrict whalebait and they do consistently enforce those restrictions. It did work in the sense that people don't "continue buying mana with real money in an attempt to outspend everyone else, with a massive payoff if they succeed". It is highly unlikely now that "Manifold [gets] a reputation as a site where people gamble away their life savings." (Especially given when we have been in major news papers since you've made this market it has been about betting on floaty rocks and being needs who have sex *gasp from the peanut gallery*!)

Overall, if you want to say "this market was specifically "Will Manifold completely ban whalebait or implement a spending cap"", I'll take my lump and move on. That was not at all the vibe I got from the question though. I interpreted it much more along the lines of "Will Manifold take actions to signficantly reduce the incidence of people gambling away money they shouldn't on silly self resolving markets", and I think that question definitely resolves Yes.

@RobertCousineau I'm not convinced that the reduction in Whalebait is due to them being unlisted now. I think people just saw how harmful they could be and decided to avoid them. Firstuserhere mentioned above that they just won M$5k in two markets, which is still a significant amount.

@IsaacKing 5k is not a completely neglibable amount, but that is at least an order of magnitude reduction compared to common winnings most anyone could get on (keeping in mind it is gambling) a daily basis in April/May, and 2-3 orders of magnitude compared to all time highs.

If the US government passed a law and it actually reduced the incidence rate of a thing by 1 order of magnitude in months, you'd almost definitely define it as a success. 2 orders of magnitude, I'd be stupefied. 3 orders of magnitude is more effective than nearly any laws I can think of.

I don't know how to prove causation here/we don't have a control/etc, but the timing and effect size seem like pretty strong evidence.

PS: all numbers are even moreso given Mana inflation.