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Comment by lwansbrough | Hacker News Reader

Lesser known is that Polymarket’s Twitter accounts themselves are actually rebranded personal accounts from (often cancelled) esports personalities. People who have given up their brand or their career sold their accounts to Polymarket, who rebranded them.

You can check by looking up tweets from their account IDs. I think it’s possible they may have even left up the old tweets if you scroll back far enough.

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I have an old reddit account with a lot of karma. I once got an offer for it, I believe around $2,000. Maybe that offer was a scam, but people seem to be contacted to buy their accounts. Its incredible to me how much this is being done by deep pocketed marketers, and I imagine botnet operators working for heaven knows who. This something not talked about much but buying up and re-branding accounts with established viewership or high-karma happens a lot.

I have seen it politically and part of shady marking. I read the girlsgamer sub on reddit and I remember a big influx of "I'm a woman and I support (current game with sexist elements)." Back then you could see everyone's post and comment history. You could see these accounts went quiet a year or two or three ago and their history was very male coded, then came back on-line recently pushing culture-war narratives and describing themselves very differently than their original posts and comments.

I also saw the same thing with some suspicious right-wing posts on some political subs I'm on. Just an old account that had little to no political posting history suddenly coming alive and posting non-stop politics.

I find it interesting and suspicious reddit only started allowing hidden profiles after this and when people started pointing this out.

I think its safe to say all social media is badly compromised and gamed by monied interests.

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