Following the failure of the meta-cosm, it was reported that the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was planning to advance into the controversial forecast market area. Its internal designator, “Arena”, will compete with other platforms, such as Polymarket and Kalshi, to integrate its large user base into a market where everything can bet on.
Meta’s Ime Archibong wrote in an internal post leaked to The New York Times: “We believe that forecasting markets is one of the most interesting new things. With the right platform, social dialogue itself can be rewarded, as people show their friends the accuracy of their predictions.”
According to The New York Times, Meta plans to launch Arena as an independent application and, if successful, integrate it with Meta ‘ s vast social media empire. The motivation is clear, as billions of dollars are invested in these speculative markets every year. The Times also noted that Arena had provoked conflict within Meta because of the growing ambiguity of the ethics and legitimacy of these platforms.
Polymarket is the giant of the industry and the most dangerous platform. Many countries have completely blocked them, and even in North America, access rights vary from region to region. The reason is simple. Polymarket, which is far beyond sports fairs, from income from cinematographers to even international conflicts, encourages users to bet on everything.
Owing to its anonymity, the platform is highly likely to be corrupt and its internal transactions have been investigated by its regulatory bodies. Not to mention the huge competitive losses caused by gambling, if applied to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, it would expose billions of users around the world to risk and make lawmakers who are already in disarray more vulnerable.
It is not clear whether Arena can be listed, but Zuckerberg is a consistent, profit-for-profit model. In 2021, Facebook changed its name to Meta, and was placed in the VR and the meta-cosm, with the result that it was a total failure.
Since then, whether by launching Threads or tilting resources towards AI, Meta has invested more time in pursuing other hot spots. Zuckerberg also expressed interest in creating his own Roblox version.
