Alan Fisher

🧵 The Irish “hug consent” ad that wasn’t: Polymarket and the business of outrage On Tuesday evening, Polymarket told its million-plus followers on @X: “JUST IN: Irish government releases new ad urging grandparents to ask for consent before hugging their grandchildren.” Within hours it had passed 185,000 views, alongside a chorus of replies about the madness of modern Ireland. Almost every part of it is wrong. The ad comes from We-Consent, a campaign run by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, a charity. Its end card carries the logos of the DRCC, Cuan (the Irish state’s agency on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence) and Community Foundation Ireland. It is state-backed, but the government didn’t make it. It isn’t new either. The ad was posted on the campaign’s YouTube channel about a month ago. Most importantly, it doesn’t urge grandparents to do anything. It’s a 42-second ad aimed at parents, with three short scenes. A little girl asks her dad where babies come from. A mum finds her teenage sons watching a sex scene on TV: “They’ll see it somewhere. Help them make sense of it.” And grandparents arrive at the front door, while the voiceover says: “Not everyone wants a hug, even from the people who love them.” The ad’s message is “Open the door to conversation and learning.” Nobody is told to ask permission. Grandparents aren’t addressed. A month-old ad encouraging parents to talk to their kids was turned into a state order to seek consent before hugging your grandchildren. So who is Polymarket, and why does this keep happening? If you assumed Polymarket was a news outlet, you’re not alone. It isn’t one. Polymarket is a crypto-based betting platform where people wager on real-world events: elections, wars, celebrity gossip, sport. Its X account posts “news” to drive traffic to those bets. Its chief executive calls it “News 2.0”. You can’t legally use it here. UK residents can close existing positions but cannot open new ones, as Polymarket holds no Gambling Commission licence. In February 2026 the Gambling Commission concluded that a UK-facing prediction market is, in most business models, a betting intermediary service under the Gambling Act 2005. The money behind it leads to Trumpworld and Silicon Valley’s right. In August 2025, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture fund, 1789 Capital, invested tens of millions of dollars in Polymarket, which had recently been valued at over $1 billion by Nigel Farage’s “friend” Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, and Trump Jr. joined its advisory board. The same announcement said the US Department of Justice and the CFTC had closed their investigations into the company, which had included an FBI raid on chief executive Shayne Coplan’s apartment. Polymarket is also X’s official prediction market partner. It is now reportedly raising about $1 billion at a valuation of roughly $21 billion. Its “news” has a documented accuracy problem. In March, a New York Times investigation found Polymarket had published hundreds of false and misleading posts across X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. Among them: amplifying a far-right claim about Ilhan Omar’s finances, implying Zohran Mamdani was cheating because his name appeared twice on the ballot, and claiming Minnesota’s governor had “declared war” on the federal government. It also falsely attributed a quote to Jeff Bezos, who publicly denied it. The CFTC is reportedly investigating Polymarket over its social media marketing practices. Britain is a recurring target... (Continued...)