Fresh off a failed metaverse, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly looking to enter the booming but ethically rancid world of prediction markets. Rivaling other platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, the app internally known as “Arena” is looking to integrate the company’s massive user base into gambling over anything and everything.
“We believe that prediction markets are one of the more interesting new content types,” writes Meta’s Ime Archibong in an internal post leaked to The New York Times. “With the right containers, the social conversation is the payoff as people aim to show off how good they are at predicting things to their friends.”
According to The Times, the plan is to launch Arena as a standalone app and, if successful, harmonize it with Meta’s sprawling social media empire. The incentive is clear, with billions wagered away on these speculative markets every year. The Times also says that Arena is causing internal conflict amid Meta staff, as the ethics and legality of these platforms have only continued to grow murky.
Though Polymarket is the leading brand, it’s also the most precarious. Many countries have outright banned it, and even in North America access varies from region to region. The reason is fairly clear. Reaching far beyond just sports gambling, Polymarket encourages users to put their money on just about anything, from box office takes to nuclear armageddon. Because of the platforms’ anonymity the potential for corruption is huge. There are already investigations into the payouts from the war on Iran and invasion of Venezuela and whether big winners were using insider information. To say nothing of the staggering losses on gambling, which if applied to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, would entice millions around the world and leaving lawmakers scrambling on an already frenzied situation.
It’s unclear if Arena will make these hurdles and arrive to market, but the pursuit is part of a pattern of Zuckerberg’s search for a win. When Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021, it was leveraging VR and ‘the metaverse’ as the next great online frontier. This was a huge bust. Instead Meta has invested far more time in chasing otherwise popular trends, be it Threads, their version of Twitter that is exclusively brands and cousins, or pooling resources on AI slop. Zuckerberg has also expressed interest in starting his own version of Roblox, because there’s never been a dubious, exploitative space that he hasn’t taken a shine to.
