Maybe it's time to shut down some Destiny markets. /s

I have used my admin powers to manually close this market. The amount of betting is too taxing for our infrastructure right now. If you think this is a mistake / have some other suggestion of how to proceed, please reply.

@SG Why? If someone wants to post a photo of penguin on their Twitter account every few minutes they don't go shutting that account down. This is absurd, please don't touch my markets.

@SG Closing markets, unlisting/delisting them? You've got to be kidding me.

@Predictor "If someone wants to post a photo of penguin on their Twitter account every few minutes..." Try hundreds of times a second.

The last time a similar market like this was created, it led to the market crashing for everyone and us having to take the time to write a custom script to delete the offending bets, etc. That time could be better spent building and improving the Manifold platform. Eventually, our infrastructure will be good enough to handle this case gracefully, but right now it isn't.

@SG Why should I be punished for this? Limit the bot activity, it's a problem you've created.

@SG Are bots even appropriate for a prediction market? They don't interpret anything, it's not like they are using AI or anything to make a reasonable assumption, they are simply exploiting the markets.

@Predictor They interpret betting patterns, which contain a lot of information about whatever's being bet on. The bottom line is that if they're making money, they're making the predictions better (and if they're not, they're a self-solving problem).

@Predictor IMO closing the market is in no way punishing you, it's simply one way to limit excessive strain on the infrastructure. I don't see the problem.

If someone posted on Twitter "Contest: who can reply to this tweet the most times today" in year one of Twitte's existence, and people wrote bots to keep posting replies as fast as possible, I think it would be completely reasonable for Twitter to halt replies on that tweet. Of course, rate limits or other solutions are a better long term solution, but you have to fix the problem with the tools at hand, and this fix isn't even particularly bad for anyone.

@jack Then send me a note. I feels like a violation of the free market spirit of my account. It's certainly not a good precedent. I cannot trust the admins not to interfere with my markets in the future.

@Predictor Ok, I can see where you're coming from, but I think halting trading on a market as quickly as possible is appropriate in this situation. Especially since it's closing a market intentionally to avoid it from potentially being unintentionally closed by server issues later, which is what happened on the previous market. And note such a halt is temporary, it could have been reopened if that made sense. If they had posted a comment saying "Please close this market, the servers can't handle it" wouldn't it have ultimately been the same result, but just slower?

In general, I don't have a problem with the admin actions on markets that I've seen. The list of admin actions I can think of has been:

• Halt trading on a market for technical reasons (this case) - good. As noted above, that the market most likely would have imploded otherwise just like the last one did, which would have resulted in an uncontrolled halt to the trading and many other problems.

• Resolve abandoned markets - good

• Unlist markets from the homepage - good. The homepage is and should be curated. And also this isn't affecting the "free market" operation of the market itself. We can have valid debates about what the best way to do that curation is, and I do have complaints about it myself of course and think the system can be improved, but it's far better than not doing anything.

• Deleting markets - good for spam markets, good for a limited set of problem cases.

• Make changes that were requested by the author - good

@Predictor I'm sorry it turned out this way, but we're doing the best we can. Our infrastructure will be better in the future, but it's not there yet. Believe me, we have zero desire to interfere with your markets. The only precedent here is if your market will crash the site and require an employee to write a custom script, then expect the Manifold team to do something.

Why should I be punished for this? Limit the bot activity, it's a problem you've created.

Why should the bots be punished for this? Why should my bot be punished every time it makes a bet on any market just because every once in a while some idiot might knowingly create a market which is going to crash manifold if not closed?

And why should other market creators be punished for your actions? I want my markets to benefit from having bots which help provide liquidity, make my market more accurate, or keep the prices of related markets consistent. If manifold limited bot activity, that would be a violation of free market spirit of my account. And I'd bet (M$5000 at 95%) that a lot more market creators benefit from bot activity than from making markets like this one.

@Yev If the site can’t handle bots to the point that they are shutting down my markets, it has nothing to do with me. Leave my markets alone.

@Yev Some idiot? Go fuck yourself. How is this for your bot, “Is Yev rude and disrespectful?” resolved Yes.

the irony of calling someone rude and disrespectful while continuing to escalate the name-calling

@a Perspective time. I am enjoying my time on this site, created a fun little market. Out of the blue the market is closed on me. I’m trying to explain why this hurt me, pleading the case that having this sort of action occur is not a good precedent to set. It did not leave me feeling warm and fuzzy. And then someone comes and escalates by calling me an idiot. I tried being diplomatic, but I will not stand idly by as someone insults me. And clearly you’ve all ganged up on me because Yev isn’t getting the same criticism for name calling. I’m just trying my best to enjoy this site and you all are just bringing me down.

@Predictor No, that's what you did the first time you created a market like this. I don't think anyone is blaming you for that because we all make mistakes.

Now you created an exact copy of that market (except changing up/down to left/right). You knew that it's likely to take down the site (because that's what it did last time), but you went with it anyway. You could've specified that bot trades do not count for this market, but you didn't. You could've set a rate limit, but you didn't. When you saw that bots are trading hundreds of times a second, you could've stopped them, but you didn't. When SG intervened, you could've edited the market description and reopened the market, but you didn't. You had so many opportunities to stop this trainwreck, but you took none of them.

If your notion of enjoying the site involves crashing it so other people can't enjoy it, then you can go do that thing you told me to do.

Why are we doing this again? Was crashing manifold once not enough?

@Yev In the previous market, the arrows went up and down. This time they go left and right. It's more stable.

@Yev Just trying to have some fun...

How will you count the number of hits?

Betting large amounts is not hitting the arrows, right?

How do you tell the difference between betting 10 manifollars and hitting an arrow?

@stone Any M$10 prediction is simply counted as hitting an arrow. Yes is the right arrow. No is the left arrow.

@Predictor do bot bets count?

@stone Only if they are for $M10.