Sen. Chris Murphy wants to ban markets about what politicians will say in speeches.
It got me wondering: Is this all because of Manifold? After all, Manifold used to be bigger than Polymarket and Kalshi, and it is used to be commonplace for them to take "inspiration" from Manifold.
Manifold Markets always had a lot of variety, and I definitely remember seeing these markets about what people will say for awhile!
I searched my email and I found this market from way back in March 2022(!) asking whether Biden will utter "mask" or "masks" during the SOTU. I didn't find a pattern of it, but I was only searching markets that I bet on.
I'm hoping that you guys will do some digging and find out which were the markets on Manifold that really started this trend (I suspect it only really got popular after you could package lots of utterances in one megamarket?), evidence on whether Polymarket and Kalshi seemed to be going based off that, and most aspirationally drawing a chain between the markets Murphy is criticizing and Manifold.
Or alternatively, showing that these were on other platforms (like Intrade or PredictIt?) for a long time, or that Polymarket staff thought of them independently, etc.
I'll give this market one week, and then resolve based on my credence that mention markets on Manifold were a part of the causal chain that led to Murphy including mention markets in his bill. I will round my credence to the nearest 25%.
My current credence is approximately 50%.
General policy for my markets: In the rare event of a conflict between my resolution criteria and the agreed-upon common-sense spirit of the market, I may resolve it according to the market's spirit or N/A, probably after discussion.
1,000People are also trading
Some very early examples from Metaculus:
Metaculus, 2017: Will Trump finish the year without mentioning the phrase "Artificial Intelligence"? https://www.metaculus.com/questions/561
Metaculus, 2017: Will Trump go two more months without uttering the words "Bitcoin" or "Cryptocurrency"? https://www.metaculus.com/questions/560
I think your linked market might be the first example on Manifold but I'm still looking. Some other early/notable examples:
Manifold, 2022: Will Xi Jinping mention China's achievements advancing "democracy and the rule of law" during his keynote speech to the 20th Party Congress? https://manifold.markets/BTE/will-xi-jinping-mention-chinas-achi
Manifold, 2022: Will Elon musk say the word “twitter” during his main talk at AI day https://manifold.markets/Heaffey/will-elon-musk-say-the-word-twitter
Manifold, 2022: Will Donald Trump mention FTX or Sam Bankman-Fried during his November 15 announcement? https://manifold.markets/JacobWood/will-donald-trump-mention-ftx-or-sa
Manifold, 2023: What will be in the first 10 words uttered by Destiny on his next stream? https://manifold.markets/Kable/what-will-be-the-first-words-uttere
Rough chart with the number of markets with "mention", "utter", or "say" in the title by platform. Mention markets were reasonably popular on Manifold for a while before they got picked up by Polymarket in mid-2024 and then Kalshi in early 2025.
The 2023 bump from Polymarket is from the CNN town hall, e.g. Will Trump mention DeSantis more than Biden during his CNN town hall? - notably this is not a copy of a Manifold market but is actually the first mention of CNN town hall in my dataset. Seems to suggest separate origins?
@wasabipesto Interesting! Thanks for the charts. On the one hand seems like Manifold preceded Polymarket and Kalshi for the market type in general, but the fact that they also evolved on Metaculus and how it wasn’t a true copy makes it feel like it may have been convergent evolution?
@Conflux Yes, that's how I'm leaning at the moment (convergent evolution)
Manifold was not the first to have this general type of market, Metaculus had earlier examples
Manifold might have been the first to shorten time timespan from months to hours
Manifold did hold an effective monopoly on this question type for multiple years
Polymarket/Kalshi might have copied the general idea from Manifold, but they were mostly not copying individual markets verbatim
Later I might go through and try to find examples of Polymarket/Kalshi markets copied directly from Manifold but that'll all be circumstantial.