The gambling website Polymarket has enabled betting related to the disappearance of NBC host Savannah Guthrie’s mom, Nancy.
After the FBI released surveillance footage of the suspect wearing a mask and gloves, Polymarket hosted a market in its “politics” section on whether the suspect would be caught by the end of February.
This market is similar to last December’s betting on the Brown University shooting.
These markets lack societal value and serve mainly to gamify tragedies, increase platform doomscrolling, and, ultimately, extract money from users.
Tragedy victims and their families are largely overlooked by prediction markets offering these types of wagers.
In theory, betting markets on horrible human tragedies could be…