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Levi has been banned.

See comments from @DavidChee here:

https://manifold.markets/levifinkelstein/resolves-the-first-day-there-was-no#nWozzTlLLrXy46q8wfCL

Satisfies "any sort of official punishment", resolves YES @Akzzz123

FYI: I've voluntarily unlisted my ChatGPT market( /Mira/how-many-tokens-have-i-chatted-with ) so it doesn't count for leagues, and consent to a "profits fine"(I'll lose money to SirSalty in a market so it counts against me).

I don't want anyone using "But Mira got away with it" for blatantly scaling it up, and would prefer that @DavidChee not hold back for fear of appearing inconsistent.

I have an average buy-in in this market of 26%(including profits from market-making), and would be willing to zero that out if necessary, if that keeps me neutral.

I also wrote an opinion here on changing the profit metric to exclude subsidies: https://manifold.markets/Akzzz123/will-mira-be-finedpenalized-by-mani?r=QWt6enoxMjM#4o1EisOEr2y366TmhpGC

@Mira

@levifinkelstein

I have an average buy-in in this market of 26%(including profits from market-making), and would be willing to zero that out if necessary, if that keeps me neutral.

@Mira zero it out so we know you're not bluffing

@levifinkelstein Done.

In VC discussing my potential ban 😨

Lots of cope in this comment section. Levi skirts the line on what is acceptable but beyond delisting or N/A there won't be any formal punishment.

Even the dodgiest of Levi's markets tend to fall within the rules. If we are going to start penalizing people for eating excess liquidity (as cited below) there will be a lot of people punished. There are systemic changes that can be implemented to clean up these impacts on leaderboards (e.g. excluding maker profits on their own markets or excluding unlisted profits and delisting markets where expected abuse occurred) but it's nonsensical for manifold staff to hunt people down for "potential 1 off instances of abuse".

If it hasn't even happened twice, why would you expect a formal punishment? For all you know Levi has discussed & cleared it with staff. They may have even explicitly said, "nah, that's pretty close to the line, don't do that again". Levi isn't dumb though, he's up there on the leaderboards and won't jeopardise that.

@Gen I don't even care if the weed market gets delisted or of the profits are excluded from leagues/profits/etc. I honestly just hosted the market due to my interest in the question. Anyone who knows me wouldn't doubt this given how smoking weed is one of my favorite activities. It seems to just be bias that makes people believe otherwise, for example see Jack's comment:

@Gen How would you feel about a "cap" on how much a Market Maker can use in Mana to participate in their own market?

And another step could be that said "cap" could also be excluded from leaderboards and leagues.

I personally think that would be a good thought to consider.

@SirCryptomind Yeah, that sounds good to me. If nothing else, its a good opportunity to brainstorm solutions to these issues outside of "punish this guy, he's breaking norms" or trying to assess whether or not something was done in good faith. Ideally, those assessments shouldn't have to be made (which your idea addresses)

The recent market-duplication stuff is also probably not great. I'm more interested in the betterment of the user experience and I don't think duplicating markets generally does that. However, from a terms of use or community guidelines perspective, it is not punishable (in some instances, encouraged).

@Gen Manifold has definitely actioned things like https://manifold.markets/levifinkelstein/what-is-the-best-weed-strain in the past.

@levifinkelstein I'm "biased" based on past observations. It's called learning from experience.

@jack I'd be interested in seeing evidence of it being actioned. If they were to action it, wouldn't the answer obviously be to N/A the market? It was a single occurrence of potentially-dodgy market activity. If someone was blatantly farming subsidies every day/week/whatever then that would be another thing.

If the problem is widespread, targeting one bad actor (assuming that bad actor actually had a pattern of this behaviour, not just one questionable market) seems ineffective when they could implement a method to delist/exclude from profits even in questionable cases

@SG said:

When I added the ability for users to subsidize markets, I realized it could be exploited and was planning to deal with this problem later after people started abusing the system. But no one did. So I forgot about it.

Then, people noticed it (e.g. here) and IIRC there were people exploiting it, and @SG put in some changes that reduced, but didn't eliminate, the problem. The problem is not super widespread, it's relatively well known but it's also relatively well known that it's considered an exploit, so I haven't seen it happening a lot.

N/Aing the market is only a viable solution in these blatant cases where the author exploits it on their own market that only they know the answer to. There are sneakier ways you can do it

I see (at least) two reasons the spamming of many duplicate markets may violate the rules:

• It's taking advantage of bonuses. "Users don’t take advantage of bonuses and other free mana sources we provide."

• Spam - "Posting low-effort or promotional markets."

I think there are definitely systemic solutions needed here, but also bad actors who exploit holes in the current system ought to be penalized, because there will always be ways to exploit the system, even as you make it more robust over time. Good actors who report the problems instead of exploiting them are rewarded by the bug bounty program.

I think it should be possible to fix this by calculating how much of the liquidity pool is your shares, and when you trade against the AMM you don't count profits from the portion of the trade that is against the shares that you yourself contributed to the liquidity pool. This might make a lot of profit calculations more complicated though.

@jack

Posting a real market question and getting real good faith trading activity is not "taking advantage of bonuses" come on....

And we're allowed to plagiarize markets, and I actually got this idea from seeing SirSalty encourage people to do this if they want. I duplicated all the biggest markets so that I can have a copy of them where I can be absolutely certain that I will agree with the resolution.

@jack I think an easier mitigation would be to just not allow people to trade in markets they've subsidized, either permanently or for some time (to give other people the opportunity to correct the market).

@jack "I think it should be possible to fix this by calculating how much of the liquidity pool is your shares, and when you trade against the AMM you don't count profits from the portion of the trade that is against the shares that you yourself contributed to the liquidity pool."

Completely agree, I think this would be great and should absolutely be implemented.

@jskf Both of those were previously considered, but they aren't good solutions

Permanently disallowing trades after subsidizing would discourage subsidizing markets that you're interested in trading in (and it's quite logical that if you're interested in a question, you may both want to trade and subsidize)

Temporarily disallowing trades after subsidizing wouldn't work at all. You would just exploit it the exact same way - when you as the author are the only person who knows the answer, you can wait until you are allowed to trade again, then buy the correct answer and take your profits.

@jack Yeah, that seems in line with what I'm saying. If it's being abused, it can be fixed. You are presupposing that 1 instance of someone subsidising a market and benefiting from it necessitates abuse (yet in an identical market by Mira, you defend it as honest & acceptable)

I like your suggestions for solving the problem. I don't have any great ideas myself and I am focused elsewhere atm (I got baited into getting involved here, because I thought the limits at 50% were overly ambitious) but more suggestions/scrutiny usually make for better solutions.

The duplicate market stuff is a bit different because sirsalty had explicitly instructed people who didn't like Levi or didn't trust them, to duplicate their markets. I don't think it violates the rules you are listing or warrants some big formal punishment.

Both things are bad for the user experience to some capacity, but why would punishing Levi solve either problem? If Levi wanted to abuse the subsidy system I am sure they would find a much better way to do it than 1 time on a public market (with discussion) for a not so significant sum.

@Gen I said that both cases the undeserved profit should not be counted. But in terms of punishment, you should take into account intent and history. If one person has a long history of abusing the rules or skirting loopholes in the rules, they should be penalized more harshly than someone who does not have such a history.

And come on, the comparison to the normal practice of duplicating markets is patently disingenuous. People duplicate a few markets, that's ok. Duplicating like 50 markets (I didn't count but it's multiple full pages worth) all at once is not the same thing.

@jack "Duplicating like 50 markets (I didn't count but it's more than a full page worth) all at once is not the same thing." Why not? If I want to duplicate 50 markets I have to spread them out over a week for some reason? Are you just making the rules up as you go?

@jack Yeah, we agree, but I don't think "I don't like Levi, and maybe he broke the rules, so he should get formally punished" is a good argument. I thought you guys would have better arguments given the big limit orders put up at 50%.

I don't even like Levi, I'm just a lawyer (not really) who took the case because there isn't enough evidence or legal standing to convict this man for the alleged crimes.

@Gen I think Levi definitely did break the rules (it's not a maybe in my mind), and should be punished for it.