Will all bets on Manifold be public by the end of next week?
22
10
Ṁ4.1KṀ130
resolved May 21
Resolved
NO1D
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1M
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Context: https://github.com/manifoldmarkets/manifold/pull/170
This is a change we've been considering for quite a while. The biggest reason not to do it, IMO, is that our UI made an implicit promise that your trades would be anonymized when it said "A trader bought..." instead of "Eva bought..."
I think this UI was a bad idea, in retrospect, because the bettor identity wasn't truly private -- it's possible to derive their identity through the API or through a web scraper. But it's a really tricky technical problem to keep the identity private; and note that public/pseudonymous cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin/Ethereum are much much more widely used than private ones like Zcash/Monero.
But this is the world we live in now, where we need to balance respecting the implied promises in our UI against what functionality would be good for the continued growth of Manifold. I'm leaning towards an opt-out period (basically, starting now) where we do an account deletion/reset for anyone who prefers privacy; and then afterwards, all trades (both historically and moving forward) will have the trader identity attached.
But I'm open to other proposals as well, and open to changing my mind!
May 10, 1:44pm: FWIW, I'd be looking to submit this change within this week, but I put the market resolution date a bit later in case we find strong reasons not to do so.
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Vote in my poll on whether to make all bets public! https://manifold.markets/SG/poll-do-you-want-all-betting-to-be
The thing is -- even if you can still technically see bets via the API -- that's enough friction in using that it makes a big difference and bets are effectively private to and for most people. I agree with @colorednoise. If the reason Maniford is thinking of making bets public is because they're all technically public via the API (and it'd be hard to change that), I think that's a bad reason. In practice, even a little friction makes a big difference, and people aren't going to like every bet being very public IMO.
It looks like [people @] Manifold doesn't believe in preference falsification or believes it can counter it with money incentives.
It outs you when you comment, and it plans to share your positions.
I'd like to know what's Manifold expectation for prediction quality when all bets are public vs when they're all private.
@vlad I'm somewhat (60%) sure that won't be possible technically - not from an API/Next level, anyways. Maybe the compromise is that in the UI, we filter out client-side any bets made before 06-01?
But it's pretty hacky, and again only a client-side fix.
you should show a dismissable "look out, bets are becoming visible" message at the top of every page, not just in https://manifold.markets/myusername/bets
Alright, so I've pushed back my proposed rollout date to 2022-06-01 to give people more time to opt out, and indicated the upcoming change in our UI.
This market will resolve to its original question! Wish I could easily spin up a secondary question on "will all bets be public by 2022-06-02" though, keeping all this comment history.
@Austin (I only voted no because I anticipated something like this, I would have voted yes on a market that was a month or two out, at pretty high odds)
One thing that I think should be public is when a market creator has an investment in a market.
As an extreme example, which if the creator of this market held a "NO" position? https://manifold.markets/Nu%C3%B1oSempere/this-question-will-resolve-positive-273301020824
Yes - feel free to reach out to me privately at austin@manifold.markets if you'd prefer to state your preferences privately.
Once again, you can ask "I'd like to hide all my previous bets" and I'll put in an override on your profile, or you can say "I'd like to reset all my previous bets" and I may implement that for your account.
@TANSTAAFL - I don't agree that we need to default to resetting, with an opt-out. I think defaulting to not resetting, with an opt out, is reasonable enough (and in fact what 95+% of the populace would prefer)
@Austin I think @TANSTAAFL 's argument is not that hiding/resetting would be a preferred option for most people, but that it's the option that preserves trust (which makes sense to me)
@TANSTAAFL I think that's plausible for maximizing trust in privacy, but that trust is not the only variable in this equation. There's also utility of our system (ledger of transactions is useful for people keeping track of their bets), and trust in not wiping data in the future whenever we feel like it.
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