Prediction market Kalshi has officially removed all affiliate badges from X. The move comes less than a week after the social media platform tightened rules around paid partnerships tied to gambling-related content.
Kalshi’s decision, confirmed on Monday evening, is a major retreat for the industry leader, which faces ongoing legal challenges and criticisms from regulators and industry groups who argue its prediction markets are nothing more than a gambling loophole designed to skirt state laws.
The removal of the badges began getting attention after Prediction News posted on X that affiliate accounts associated with @KalshiTrade had lost their badges and received verification notices suggesting that their accounts were under review.
In the hours that followed, the situation got messier as some suggested the removals were part of X’s enforcement of its updated Paid Partnerships Policy, while Kalshi pushed back, insisting the decision to strip accounts of the badges was entirely voluntary.
A Kalshi spokesperson told Front Office Sports that the company “decided to remove Kalshi badges,” adding that while users enjoyed them, they “became too difficult to police,” and that people sometimes mistook badged accounts for Kalshi-endorsed messaging.
A Meme That Set Off Alarm Bells
The removal of Kalshi affiliate badges raised many eyebrows because it came only a few days after Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, shared a post calling out prediction markets. In the meme of a utopian-looking future, Bier wrote, “The world without prediction market spam on X,” which many took as a hint that X was going to begin cracking down on prediction market promotion on the social media platform.
Separately, as everything was unfolding on Monday, Awful Announcing posted that X had removed Kalshi badges under its updated Paid Partnerships Policy. The Kalshi Newsroom account pushed back, saying the company had removed the badges themselves and that “the X team was not involved in the decision.”
The account went on to ask the outlet to “please refrain from posting fake news about Kalshi without contacting us first.” Awful Announcing didn’t respond to Kalshi’s post. Despite Kalshi’s denials, the timing is conspicuous: accounts suddenly losing badges less than a week after X updated its gambling affiliate policy and just a few days after Bier’s post.
X’s Policy Change Looms Large
Much of the tension on the platform stems from X’s quiet update to its Paid Partnerships Policy last week. The new rules place a strict ban on influencers and creators using X’s paid partnership tools to promote “gambling products and services,” a category that now explicitly includes sports betting, lotteries, social casinos, and other gambling-related content.
X’s updated gambling policy focuses on paid posts labeled as partnerships; users are free to engage in all the gambling-related chatter they’d like on the platform. Still, many prediction markets have come to rely on affiliates, referral links, and creator promos, so if X is indeed cracking down on these platforms, it’ll make it much more difficult for them to market to demographics that frequent X.
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Prediction market Kalshi has officially removed all affiliate badges from X. The move comes less than a week after the social media platform tightened rules around paid partnerships tied to gambling-related content. Kalshi’s decision, confirmed on Monday evening, is a major retreat for the industry leader, which faces ongoing legal challenges and criticisms from regulators
The post Kalshi Pulls Affiliate Badges as X Tightens Gambling Promotions Rules appeared first on CasinoBeats.