It’s not a fucking market, it’s a gambling site and the worst type of it. Its gambling on if a human being will die, if somebody will suffer, if wars will be won or lost

This website is the absolute anus of the internet, only shit comes out of it, aside from the eventual dick head coming in

With ‘blocking’ they likely mean at DNS level, unless France invested in a lot of DPI censorship infrastructure.

I think it’s a good step while the rest of the world seems to just let it and other “prediction sites” operate. Gambling itself should be at least heavily regulated because of a variety of reasons, but this is even worse because gambling is the best possible use. The worst cases being things like betting a wildfire will start on a specific day and then… starting a wildfire. That’s closer to a website hiring hitmen, something more dark web than new tech.

Now is it a slippery slope? Maybe, especially since it’s not a direct way to stop the problem. Dark web services are there because they are illegal, they aren’t just blocked by an ISP. Laws need to clarify how much of this is gambling (which is legal in France and subject to rules) and how much of this is dangerous activity. Legally clarifying these rules is essential to a long term solution, but again I think it’s ok to take a quick first step while that process plays out.

I was going to say it shouldn’t matter whether they block the website because Polymarket is largely decentralized and runs on smart contracts, and so should be accessible through a third party frontend even if the main site is blocked, but it seems that they did it wrong and set things up so that all user wallets must be explicitly approved by the company to use it and so it has no properties of permissionlessness, if I am reading this right:

/// @notice Adds a new operator
/// Can only be called by a current admin
/// @param _operator - The new operator
function addOperator(address _operator) external onlyAdmin {
    require(!operators[_operator], AlreadyOperator());
    operators[_operator] = true;
    emit NewOperator(_operator, msg.sender);
}

Blocking is harsh, but honestly there seem to be limited different actions that can be taken, but will not really have a great impact. These prediction markets sell themselves as putting your money where your mouth is, which sounds great on paper but without regulation opens up for a select few to do «inside trading».

Most users are still primarily using it for sports betting which is very heavily regulated. For good reason. Regulating these in the same way would be the right action but, I guess we could see if this actually will have an impact. I’m sceptical.

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This is the wrong way to do things. The government should not be dictating what its citizens are allowed to access on the Internet. It seems like so many countries go after ISPs and DNS providers to solve their problems for them, and I think it’s mostly just laziness.

What France should be doing is making it illegal for Polymarket to operate in their country, and fining them for violations.