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Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
- pydry 7mo agoThe level of censorship in Israel right now is off the charts: https://www.972mag.com/israel-media-censorship-iran-war/ https://www.972mag.com/israel-media-censorship-iran-war/ I suspect the gambler probably would have won on the basis of what happened but lost on the basis of what the times reported.
- mickwe 7mo agoBut the Times of Israel reporter reported that a missile hit - and where. The censor tries to prevent reports like that, for (ostensibly) security reasons - telling the enemy where their missiles hit.
- shell0x 7mo agoIs there a trustworthy independent source? I don't trust anything coming from Iranian or Israeli news outlets.
- bootsmann 7mo agoThere is a clip embedded within the article that corroborates what the journalist wrote.
- gpderetta 7mo agoI don't understand what are you saying. The journalist published an article claiming that a missile struck without being intercepted (although with no damage). The gamblers wanted the journalist to retract and say that the missile was intercepted. Are you saying that the gamblers were actually the censors or that the reality was that the missile was indeed intercepted and somehow the censors forced the journalist to say it wasn't?
- damageboy 7mo agoThe rules don't apply for reporters outside of Israel, and this was historically been the way that Israeli journos and other bypass the censorship completely. The author is being pressured (IMO) because the degens feel like they can threaten him (physical proximity)
- jrjeksjd8d 7mo agoI think it's the opposite - the censorship has made the Israeli public believe they're safer than they really are. The US is lying about their stockpiles and frantically moving resources from East Asia to try and shore up missile defense in the Middle East. These people believed that no Iranian missiles could possibly get through and instead of accepting they were misled they're shooting the messenger
- Pay08 7mo agoYou're plainly misinformed. Both the USA and Israel running low on munitions has been all over the media for months.
- mvelbaum 7mo agoI live in Israel. There is fake news being spread about Tel Aviv being destroyed and Israel being hit hard. This is absolutely false. The volume of rockets is way lower than the 12 Day War. In fact, I do the irresponsible thing of not even going to the bomb shelter when the odd siren rings out. There was a decision made by the security establishment not to allow reporting on Iranian missile hits in order to make it harder for the Iranians to do BDA.
- fzil 7mo agoMan the moral degradation is off the charts. Prediction markets are easily the worst things to grace the internet by far and its not even close.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7mo agoBy far?! There's a very long list.
- Waterluvian 7mo agoI think the idea behind a prediction market is pretty interesting, especially from an economics dataset point-of-view. And there's probably a lot of fun, harmless things to bet on. eg. "Will Conan lead an extravagent musical number at the Oscars?" But we're in an era of less and less responsible government oversight, so the whole thing naturally gets ruined if there's no guardrails to prevent peoeple without souls or the accompanying morals from participating in ugly, greedy ways. Though I'm also likely to adopt the idea that the absenece of competent government is an effect, not a cause, of some societies having had to mortgage their souls. Edit: I mean, yeah, if you're stuck being fixated on pessimism and greed, of course there's a lot of ways this can be exploited. I just think that in its more pure, good faith form, the idea of letting the market tell you odds of things happening is pretty fascinating. I'm sure there's a whole body of economics on this idea, that it might be a better predictor of events than other models. I had fun betting $5 here and there on video game announcements/awards. (though for me betting is a game, not a financial strategy)
- lotsofpulp 7mo ago>And there's probably a lot of fun, harmless things to bet on. eg. "Will Conan lead an extravagent musical number at the Emmys?" I cannot fathom what could be fun about that.
- KeplerBoy 7mo agoKinda legal insider trading, I guess.
- 7mo ago
- seydor 7mo agoYep, far worse than cryptocurrency
- colesantiago 7mo agoAI is 1000%+ far worse to be fair. Cryptocurrency (although I hate it) you don't have to participate, so no harm done. Prediction Markets you don't have to participate, so no harm done. With AI, you're participating whether you like it or not. Layoffs, Job displacement, etc. There is no opt out here. Once you're replaced with AI, that is it. At least with cryptocurrency and prediction markets you can make money but it's obviously risky. Ultimately with AI it would just push people to cryptocurrencies and prediction markets.
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 7mo agoDude, stop.
- mpalmer 7mo agoDo you have a positive defense of betting markets? You're spraying defensive whataboutism all over this thread and lowering the discourse. > Prediction Markets you don't have to participate, so no harm done. Harm: https://www.npr.org/2025/11/13/nx-s1-5605561/college-athletes-struggle-with-personal-attacks-on-social-media https://www.npr.org/2025/11/13/nx-s1-5605561/college-athlete... Harm: https://militarnyi.com/en/news/in-november-an-isw-analyst-manipulated-the-situation-in-myrnohrad-to-rig-map-bets/ https://militarnyi.com/en/news/in-november-an-isw-analyst-ma... Harm: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/05/prediction-markets-merkley-ban-iran.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/05/prediction-markets-merkley-b...
- colesantiago 7mo agoWhy did you send in an article that was completely irrelevant that has nothing to do with prediction markets? What you're showing me is a death threat, which has existed for time in humans. Betting markets of all kinds have existed for a long time and haven't been banned. Banning on particular betting market prediction markets altogether and pushing it underground would make things far worse.
- shablulman 7mo ago[dead]
- epolanski 7mo agoPrediction markets need to be banned globally ASAP, but it would've helped the article to bring proof of: - the emails - the whatsapp messages - the discord messages - the X messages Mind you, I'm not stating the journalist is lying or overblowing, in fact I suspect this is all more widespread than we think, but it's odd that the journalist puts emphasis on the sources of his information in the case of the missile, yet it's not about his direct threats, some of those public like X replies.
- colesantiago 7mo agoWhy does everything you don't like need to be banned? Downvoters: I really doubt that you actually successfully 100% banned anything in the history of technology.
- dwroberts 7mo agoWhy is everything you like protected from being banned?
- pjc50 7mo agoPrediction markets on death are an assassination market. That's why they're against the rules even on Polymarket and Kalshi. Prediction markets on terrorist attacks and wars are one step back from that, but similar negative side effects are possible. And, regardless of what people are betting on, the corruption incentive appears where it did not previously, resulting in things like this. (I don't think there's literally an Iranian missile operator opening Polymarket, taking out a position for "missile lands on Israel", and then pressing the launch button, but ultimately that's what uncensored markets with uncensored movement of money would enable)
- epolanski 7mo ago1. It's not something I don't like, it's something plain illegal in most of the world, including the US under the Dodd-Frank act, which the current executive has decided to not enforce. 2. The reason it is illegal it is beyond obvious: basic economics and game theory explain you how dangerous it is tying real world events with financial incentives.
- mpalmer 7mo agoI truly don't know how you wake up, read this story with your morning coffee, and go to work at a company like this.
- RGamma 7mo agoPsychopaths don't care about ethics, much less if money is involved. At best they feel indifference, at worst enjoyment.
- Pay08 7mo agoSame way anyone working at a traditional casino does, I'd imagine.
- Esophagus4 7mo agoI would bet it’s some combination of 1) “I believe in what we’re doing as a mostly positive force in the world” 2) “Eh, the money is good” Probably the same way FB people feel, probably the same way Palantir people feel, etc etc
- NicuCalcea 7mo ago3) If I won't do it, someone even worse will.
- crazygringo 7mo agoWhat the heck does the company (Polymarket) have to do with any of this? There's nothing wrong with a prediction market. There are a lot of reasons why they're helpful in judging the probability of future events more accurately than any single analyst, and are therefore a net benefit to society, no different from newspapers and stock markets. These are just individuals making criminal threats. They're the bad guys here. They don't work for Polymarket or anything. Your comment is like saying you can't imagine how anyone could go to work at the Olympics after Nancy Kerrigan got struck by Tonya Harding's ex-husband. Something criminal happened, but the Olypmics are not the one responsible.
- Zambyte 7mo ago
- markus_zhang 7mo agoThe gambling market is really bringing out the worst of us.
- gcr 7mo agoB-b-but futarchy and unbiased decisionmaking means well-calibrated markets could be a net good for society!! /hj
- fnands 7mo agoUgh, the sophistry (or at least self-deceiving arguments) people throw around to defend these markets makes my stomach churn.
- Terr_ 7mo ago"It is difficult to get a prediction-market person to understand something, when their stock-options and IPO depends upon them not understanding it." -- Cyborg Upton Sinclair
- markus_zhang 7mo agoI don't know, man, looks like we are now literally gambling on whether people die today or tomorrow. This is even worse than underground sports gambling.
- zbentley 7mo agoYeah, that claim was always ludicrous to me too. Wisdom-of-crowds isn’t an unbiased decision making strategy, it’s quite biased. Crowd-wisdom works best as a limiter on the bias of other decision making strategies—this is why democracies use representatives rather than direct votes for most decisions. And polymarket isn’t even the wisdom of crowds lol. At its greatest possible adoption it’s still the wisdom of internet-connected (mostly) white men with time and money to spend on gambling.
- sebzim4500 7mo ago
- fnands 7mo agoMan, something like this is going to be a plot point in a movie/tv series soon. Could work in some crime procedural.
- PurpleRamen 7mo agoThis is an old plot, done already in dozens of different variations.
- fnands 7mo agoI think there are lots of plots that revolve around rigging sports betting (e.g. sub-plot in Pulp Fiction), but I can't really think of a case where it is not so much about manipulating the actual act that occurred, but rather the news reporting of the act.
- strgcmc 7mo agoI think you might be over-fixated on a very prediction-market-esque framing of this plot device... if you broaden it slightly, the idea of someone in a fictional world manipulating the news reporting of an act or set of acts, rather than caring so much about the root act itself, is as stated before, quite common. For example, this from House of Cards: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/arts/television/house-of-cards-season-4-episode-6-recap.html?unlocked_article_code=1.T1A.50wr.Pr_LeKa7xeiz&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/arts/television/house-of-... > Pollyhop is a fictional, Google-esque search engine that according to Leann’s polling expert is being exploited by the Republican candidate Will Conway in ways that suggest Underwood can’t possibly beat him in the general election. The explanation of how Pollyhop works is convoluted at best, but the gist is that Conway and his people are manipulating search engine results so that only positive coverage of their side appears. Or more recent examples of what essentially boils down to the plot device of "media manipulation" aka manipulating the "news reporting of the act": - See the most recent season of Industry, which included several plot points about manipulating news coverage as a short-seller and the company being targeted fought back and forth (including specific focus on the individual journalists involved) - See Andor, everything about how the Empire twists perception of what's happening on Ghorman, leading up the Ghorman massacre itself, and then culminating in Mon Mothma's speech in the Senate denouncing "the death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil" - See The Orville, a particular episode: https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule which includes the plot point of hacking that society's "master feed" to plant false manipulative stories to curry public favor and save a character from being punished - See The Boys, how Vought manipulates the media to twist coverage of their "heroes" even when they commit atrocities - See other House of Cards plotlines involving Zoe Barnes and being a direct mouthpiece for Frank Underwood I think the only real difference if any, is that in the most common form of portrayal, maybe less attention is paid to the journalist as the point of leverage, and how they deal with threats or bribes or whatever. The fact that such manipulation occurs, is commonly accepted as a trope, without requiring too much of a deep dive. Whether a story choose to focus on the "reporter's perspective" is perhaps less common, but not uncommon IMO.
- defly 7mo agoFYI: In November, an ISW Analyst Manipulated the Situation in Myrnohrad to Rig Map Bets https://militarnyi.com/en/news/in-november-an-isw-analyst-manipulated-the-situation-in-myrnohrad-to-rig-map-bets/ https://militarnyi.com/en/news/in-november-an-isw-analyst-ma...
- varjag 7mo ago(as reported by Quincy Institute, a thoroughly pro-Russian think tank)
- zarathustreal 7mo ago(Ad-hominem is not a counter-example btw)
- loeg 7mo agoNothing about GP's comment is ad-hominem; it's neutral, factual context. Unless you dispute the factual claims?
- culi 7mo agoIt's counterfactual. The think tank has nothing to do with Russia and official denounces the invasion and upholds Ukraine's territorial rights. They have simply written critically about the role NATO has played in making this conflict inevitable and the history of NATO sabotage of peace negotiations.
- loeg 7mo ago> The think tank has nothing to do with Russia and official denounces the invasion and upholds Ukraine's territorial rights. GP did not claim it was associated with Russia or that it had made specific claims about the invasion. > They have simply written critically about the role NATO has played in making this conflict inevitable and the history of NATO sabotage of peace negotiations. That seems aligned with the original claims.
- VladVladikoff 7mo ago[flagged]
- carefulfungi 7mo agoAthletes are also receiving death threats from gamblers. * https://www.npr.org/2025/11/13/nx-s1-5605561/college-athletes-struggle-with-personal-attacks-on-social-media https://www.npr.org/2025/11/13/nx-s1-5605561/college-athlete... ... and many, many other stories.
- bitmasher9 7mo agoI don’t understand how this isn’t an immediate open and shut case for the police, assuming certain facts are verified independently. At the point that you’re making death threats to strangers you should be removed from civil society.
- pjc50 7mo agoIf the gamblers are outwith Israel, there's not a lot the Israeli police can do. They're not going to go full Operation 'Wrath of God' for this guy.
- ryan_j_naughton 7mo agoI agree. This involved should be investigated and prosecuted. Just a pedantic, nit pick: you said "should be removed from civil society" but I think you just mean "removed from society" as in prosecuted and imprisoned. "Civil society" has a specific meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society
- bitmasher9 7mo agoThanks. I’m not trained as a lawyer so sometimes make these types of mistakes. I’m happy to learn.
- baobabKoodaa 7mo ago> I agree. This involved should be investigated and prosecuted. Cool! Since you know who the involved persons are (as you agreed with it being an "open and shut case"), why don't you let the rest of us know, too? And while you're at it, tell the police as well. I'm sure it will help their investigation!
- TheDong 7mo agoYeah, but how do you find the person making the threats? Polymarket accounts are more-or-less just a crypto address. Whatsapp accounts are somewhat easier to link to a real identity, but still not hard to at least obscure a bit. The arm of the law struggles to reach across borders, and on the internet, it's quite plausible all those involved are in different jurisdictions.
- voidUpdate 7mo agoDoes the "Continue without disabling" button on the adblock popup just not do anything for anyone else?
- newAccount2025 7mo agoThe site is completely unusable. Even with reader mode it somehow aggressively refreshed. Gave up in disgust.
- Pay08 7mo agoI'm using Ublock Origin and didn't get any such popup. The site just worked.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- ajross 7mo agoSo, just to point it out: people don't get violent and criminal magically because they made a bet. They get violent and criminal to backstop a bet they can't cover. The story here isn't that horrible criminals are using Polymarket. It's that Polymarket bettors are overleveraged, and at the margin some of them turn to crime to avoid losing their shirts. We've all been looking around for the trigger for the market-crash-we-all-know-is-coming. Seems like "too much betting on a stupid war of choice" is just dumb enough to fit the timeline we've been trapped in. Very on-brand. In other news: I'm almost entirely out of volatiles in my own portfolio right now. Cash and bonds until this pops. Frankly the chances are that today will be the day[1] are about as high as they've ever been. [1] Trump, sigh, basically went on camera and capitulated, telling the world that there is no plan, the US doesn't have the capability to ensure trade through Hormuz and that Iran will deny access until Iran decides otherwise. Markets don't like uncertainty, but they really, really hate losing wars.
- ambicapter 7mo agoThis argument is sophistry, the nature of gambling is that gamblers over-leverage themselves compulsively.
- zbentley 7mo ago[dead]
- ajross 7mo agoSo... no, it's not? You're saying everyone who makes a bet on anything is doing so compulsively? Literally everyone has bet on something. The absolutely overwhelming majority of "bets" placed (via whatever definition you want to give them) are basically benign and don't reflect mental illness. But even so, you're missing my point: even compulsive gamblers don't as a general rule resort to criminal extortion to cover their losses. The interpretation here isn't about the psychology of the criminals, that's sort of speciously true. It's that the fact that "regular bettors" become "criminals", and are doing so at scale, is a proxy measurement for the amount of leverage in the system.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- ratg13 7mo agoOne has to wonder if the people placing these bets didn’t have some plans of their own. A million dollars for a single bet is extremely high stakes.
- bitmasher9 7mo agoA million dollars is high stakes, but not extremely high. We’ve seen much much higher wagers.
- giarc 7mo agoIran could fund their war by manipulating these markets.
- dangus 7mo ago[flagged]
- hersko 7mo agoI think you need a break from the internet.
- dangus 7mo agoExcellent job criticizing the content of my comment. I see you’ve decided to use the strategy of an ad hominem attack. This is a really great classic one! I applaud your efforts. Since it’s too hard to refute the substance of my comment you can just point out how I’m some crazy person. If you’re open to it I invite you to pick just one point I made and see if you can find some kind of logical flaw in my reasoning.
- arduanika 7mo agoCan you name anything about this news story that couldn't have happened in a non-Israeli context? Or does the Israel angle just draw you in like a moth to a flame, until it's the only word in the whole article you can really read? And to GP's point: Can you point to one paragraph in your original post that does not cry out that you need to log off? I sure can't.
- dangus 7mo agoImagine it’s the Vietnam war, and there’s an American reporter reporting on missiles/bombs hitting South Vietnam. The Viet Cong disputes the reporting and furthermore publishes death threats against the American journalist. Of course, this is a logical response from your enemy combatant, who isn’t going to be in the habit of agreeing with you. The American journalist should expect it. Furthermore, American armed forces obviously shouldn’t be attacking North Vietnam in the first place. Anyone who is even halfway educated already knows that it’s an unjustified war. This proxy war is taking place among global superpowers and the primary victims are the local people. I don’t know what’s so hard to understand about this: Israel/USA started the current war in Iran. This is established fact and I don’t even think the US government disputes it. The only difference with today’s war is that Israel is within missile range of Iran, which is why I said if I was an Israeli citizen I’d be rip roaring mad at my government for being incompetent. Netanyahu isn’t seen as a bumbling fool like Trump but he actually is. Remember that before he was elected he was seen as an extreme candidate. He is escalating war in his region which directly threatens his own people, and it has been largely unnecessary with nothing to gain. I seem to recall the genocide in Gaza being a military campaign that his own generals advised against. A journalist on the side of the aggressor is whining about getting death threats and reporting it to his local beat cops like it’s a lost puppy. Welcome to the war your country started. Wars tend to involve death threats. I don’t know what you mean by “log off,” you mean bury my head in the sand and stop following current events? Or turn off my brain and accept the point of view coming from AIPAC, a lobbying organization that spends tens of millions of dollars supporting political candidates in my state. These are major news stories that I would know about just by tuning in to any news network. I assure you I’m not chronically online. This is my only social media account. No Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok.
- bhouston 7mo agoAn additional complication is that both Iran and Israel are engaging in heavy censorship of news articles, obstensively to prevent the opposing side from getting intelligence/feedback on their missile strikes/other activities, but it is also definitely to control the narrative: https://www.972mag.com/israel-media-censorship-iran-war/ https://www.972mag.com/israel-media-censorship-iran-war/ This could definitely affect key polymarket bets in the near term. I expect over the long term the truth will come out, but in the near term, it could be obscured.
- MiddleEndian 7mo agoI'm not much of a gambler, but I bet on an MMA match once when I was in Vegas. I was informed that the payouts (or lack thereof) were determined by whatever the judges stated at the end of the night, even if the call was controversial and later invalidated. So this sort of thing does affect other forms of gambling, although obviously on a less significant scale.
- bhouston 7mo agoInteresting. What would happen if it was found later that the match was thrown on purpose by either the judges or the fighters? This sort of suggests that the best trading strategy would be if you had a guy inside of the censorship bureau who could help you define reality as you want it.
- lithos 7mo agoHappening to the NBA gambling leagues now with both players and referees.
- MiddleEndian 7mo ago>Interesting. What would happen if it was found later that the match was thrown on purpose by either the judges or the fighters? This was over a decade ago so I don't remember the exact details, but I'm sure this was covered by the wording of the agreement and I'd have been out of luck with the bookies. Can't comment on unrelated legal penalties, but in Japan there was match fixing in sumo and nobody got arrested (couldn't prove gambling) but a lot were fired: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match-fixing_in_professional_sumo#2011_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match-fixing_in_professional_s... https://factsanddetails.com/japan/cat21/sub138/item1779.html https://factsanddetails.com/japan/cat21/sub138/item1779.html Unfortunately, combat sports are relatively easy to fix because you only have a few people involved in the live action at a time. >This sort of suggests that the best trading strategy would be if you had a guy inside of the censorship bureau who could help you define reality as you want it. As far as I can tell, it seems like the betting market sites explicitly encourage insider activities, and I would not be surprised if this happened for real. See: https://www.rawstory.com/leavitt/ https://www.rawstory.com/leavitt/ >Gamblers cry foul after White House briefing ends seconds before key betting cutoff A slightly different example because if true, the insider would be changing her behavior rather than changing the reporting of the facts. But it still shows that a small number of insiders (or a single insider) can change betting results.
- caminante 7mo agoPer HN policy, stop editorializing the headlines. Here's the actual headline: > Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story
- Bender 7mo agoecho -en 'Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story' | wc -c 107 HN also forces editorializing to less than 81 characters. I too sometimes struggle to editorialize the title to something that fits and ideally does not lose context.
- caminante 7mo agoFair point. I'd trim the bit about Polymarket to get under the cap. > Gamblers [...] are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story You'll lose a little topical/karma sizzle (with no "Polymarket" keyword), but it's higher fidelity.
- Bender 7mo agoThe submission is currently still under 2 hours old so defly could edit if they see your comment. After that it would be up to dang.
- caminante 7mo agoIt's thoughtful of you to point out, though, not a big deal.
- arduanika 7mo agoIt's a big deal to me! I have a bet riding on this! If the mods don't change the headline to contain the word "rewrite" by midnight PST, then... eh, nvm, I probably shouldn't even joke about this. (To be clear, this whole story is horrifying. I hope there's a way to identify these bettors and bring them to justice.)
- logicallee 7mo agoThis part of the story stood out for me: >More emails arrived in my inbox. >“When will you update the article?” one was titled. The email had no text content, only an image — a screenshot of my initial interaction with Daniel. >Except it did not show my actual response to Daniel, but a fabricated message that I had not written. >“Hi Daniel, Thank you for noticing, I checked with the IDF Spokesperson and it was indeed intercepted. I sent it now for editing, it will be fixed shortly,” I supposedly wrote. (To be clear, I wrote no such thing.) this seems to be a main issue. Would it help journalists if emails were quotable by default and the first party email providers could verify specific quotations? This way this class of fraud, market manipulation, and fake news would disappear. I don't see why people wouldn't leave their responses as quotable when responding to journalists, for example, and journalists could also set their responses as quotable by default. What do you think, could this help this issue?
- tsimionescu 7mo agoThere is nothing that can prevent doctored screenshots of UIs from being disseminated. The only defense is not considering screenshots from random sources even evidence of anything.
- logicallee 7mo ago>There is nothing that can prevent doctored screenshots of UIs from being disseminated. Thanks for thinking it through. To combat this, the interface could show the attestation id prominently so that it's obviously wrong or missing something if it doesn't contain it. Something like this mockup[1] and be easily linked so 1) it would be super suspicious for someone to quote someone without linking to the attestation - and 2) people could type the attestation ID from a screenshot into the server themselves. This would require the attesting server to keep a copy of sent email but that doesn't seem too bad. If it's been deleted, you're not willing to be quoted on it anymore. It would be voluntary. What do you think of this idea overall? I realize that the mockup seems fake - the whole point is that it's obviously fake, because it's being hosted elsewhere and not where it says it is. [1] https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/42c38630-2728-4953-b453-a211e8bc794e https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/42c38630-2728-4953-b453-a...
- htrp 7mo agoisn't this basically the crypto oracle problem?
- mypgovroom 7mo ago[flagged]
- iamacyborg 7mo agoI wonder when/if this'll be banned like the mechanically similar binary options were in '18/19 (in Europe and the UK).
- snowwrestler 7mo agoAlan Kay had a great quote: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” A quote that many technologists and inventors have used as inspiration over the years as they create things. It looks a little less inspiring when applied to prediction markets. Because yeah, one way to win a bet is to bet on something you already know you can make happen. AKA insider trading. But even worse, another way to win a bet is to cajole / threaten / bribe someone into lying about what really happened. That’s the stakes in this story. And at that point, the social value of prediction markets has gone negative. You’ve no longer got a tool that helps predict reality, you’ve got a new way to reward people for lying about what is real and not real.
- _wire_ 7mo agoWhen "the best way to predict the future is to invent it" is combined with crime it seems clear that betting on crime is acting as an accessory. A business facilitating betting on crime is a criminal enterprise, in the sense of RICO. Polymarket bets on war overshadow a more basic concern: War prosecuted by a unitary executive without the express consent of the governed is a criminal enterprise. Trading in such an enterprise is corrupt regardless of its mechanism. In a global society, the governed are a world-wide body politic, making war fundamentally a racket.
- EcommerceFlow 7mo agoSame thing has been happening with sports bets for years, this particular point (threats) isn't unique to political betting.
- Pay08 7mo agoGood news, Polymarket also does sports betting, but since it's a "prediction market", it's not covered by gambling laws.
- pindab0ter 7mo agoI think time and time again that incentives are most important in determining how a market and by extension a society behaves. These prediction markets incentivize the absolute worst in humanity. These markets allow you to bet on when the invasion of a foreign country or the demise of a person happens. There comes a point where one bets against someone to die and you will see themselves incentivized to make that happen.
- bagacrap 7mo agoTechnically you can't bet on the demise of a person, at least in the US, as participants recently discovered when the previous supreme leader of Iran was killed and their "leadership change" bet did not pay out.
- thrance 7mo agoThere are bets like "X out of function by april" which are functionally equivalent to betting on their demise.
- ptsneves 7mo agoThis is true for Kalshi but not for Polymarket. Also Kalshi voided the bet and it got sued. By the way prediction markets are commodity securities where Matt Levine mentioned it should not allow death contracts. Here we are though..
- loeg 7mo agoKalshi doesn't pay out for demise of a person (though, arguably inconsistently[1]); Polymarket does (probably in violation of US regulation, but there are no rules anymore). [1]: For example, they did pay out on a bet over whether Jimmy Carter would attend Trump's 2025 inauguration; he didn't, at least in part because he was dead.
- fer 7mo agoPolymarket doesn't operate in the US. https://docs.polymarket.com/api-reference/geoblock https://docs.polymarket.com/api-reference/geoblock
- hashstring 7mo agoIf there’s something that screams late-stage capitalism any louder, I don’t want it…
- throw4847285 7mo agoI would love to read the Philip K Dick story about this, but I'm not enjoying living in it.
- gopher_space 7mo agoDelphi markets feature prominently in Shockwave Rider by John Brunner. It's an important book, and Brunner is amazing if you've never read him before. He's actually one of my metrics for judging used book stores. Sci-fi has Brunner, politics has Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, nonfiction has someone's old annotated copy of G.E.B.
- throw4847285 7mo agoI'll admit, I bought Stand on Zanzibar based on a recommendation from my Dad, but I only got a few pages in before getting distracted by something else. I should give Brunner another shot.
- natechols 7mo ago"The Shockwave Runner" has aged vastly better than "Stand on Zanzibar", which I found unreadable. The first book predicts an early-21st century society full of smartphone users, ubiquitous privacy violations, and governments run by criminal gangs; the other is like if Paul Ehrlich wrote a sci-fi novel. I don't think "The Shockwave Runner" is as well written as any of the other cyberpunk classics, but as a guess at what 40-50 years in the authors future would look like, it's almost freakily realistic. (Although it feels like reading Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" at times - familiar tech described with alien words.)
- gopher_space 7mo agoStand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, and Shockwave Rider all feel like variations on a theme. If you start with Shockwave and absolutely love it then you are in luck because there's more where that came from. But all of his books are worth reading imho. > as a guess at what 40-50 years in the authors future would look like, it's almost freakily realistic. Yeah, I should really revisit Future Shock. That book might have been a little ahead of its time. > Although it feels like reading Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" at times - familiar tech described with alien words. 100% agree, and I think it's almost a bigger flaw here. I'm not saying "it gets better in the second season" but I wouldn't be surprised if some people bounce off the future slang. Interestingly enough, Brunner might be one of the only white authors I've read who describes his characters by skin tone.
- porridgeraisin 7mo ago> The Economic Times, an Indian English-language business-focused news site God help those using this newspaper as their source for betting
- AlexandrB 7mo agoPrediction markets remind of the "Safety Training" episode[1] of the Office where Kevin and others are betting on the outcome of various situations. It was pretty funny and absurd back then. Didn't expect it to be so prescient. [1] https://theoffice.fandom.com/wiki/Safety_Training https://theoffice.fandom.com/wiki/Safety_Training
- sharp_runner_84 7mo agothis was kind of inevitable once prediction markets got large enough. when traders have millions in open positions on geopolitical events, they have direct financial incentive to suppress or promote specific narratives. same dynamic as short sellers attacking companies, but applied to real-world events instead of stocks. the whole prediction market thesis assumes information flows freely into prices — breaks down when participants start trying to influence the information itself
- jacquesm 7mo ago> the whole prediction market thesis assumes information flows freely into prices — breaks down when participants start trying to influence the information itself How naive can you possibly be...
- sharp_runner_84 7mo agolol fair enough, naive is a strong word but yeah i get your point. i didnt mean nobody tries to manipulate markets — obviously they do. my point was more that the original thesis behind prediction markets assumed this would be a minor problem because the financial incentive to correct misinformation would outweigh the incentive to create it. turns out thats not always true when you can make more money threatening a journalist than trading the actual contract
- jacquesm 7mo agoI think it is much stronger than that: I think the whole reason these exist is to create a way for parties to profit off insider information that side-steps the stock market. Any other effects are a happy coincidence.
- sharp_runner_84 7mo agothats a pretty cynical take but i can see the argument. the counter tho is that most of the volume on kalshi is sports contracts now where insider info barely applies - like you dont need a mole at the NBA to know lebron is probably scoring over 25 tonight. the geopolitical stuff is where the insider trading concern is legit
- phkahler 7mo agoThe pull quote "The attempt by these gamblers to pressure me to change my reporting so that they would win their bet did not and will not succeed. But I do worry that other journalists may not be as ethical if they are promised some of the winnings" misses something. If the reporter changes his story, then the people on the other side of the bet might start harassing him. OTOH individual betters anger will depend which side of the odds they're on.
- bagacrap 7mo agoAlso that journalists are paid for their work, often by someone with political interests, so they are already subject to pressure to modify their reporting. Hopefully not usually threats of violence though!
- Terr_ 7mo agoI think this is way worse. Traditionally violence towards journalists comes from (A) predictable entities and (B) they are curbed by their ability to operate with anonymity and deniability. In contrast: 1. Any number of arbitrary unknown bettors on a could commit violence for reasons you'd never have even anticipated, like whether an event happened at 4:59 or at 5:01. 2. The violence can arrive from all sides, simultaneously. Bettors who like what you wrote are not your allies, and one way to ensure an existing report is not revised is to put the journalist out of commission. 3. The same "prediction" market can act as a criminal coordinator for subcontracting the violence, with a new bet: "Will $JOURNALIST revise $ARTICLE with $CHANGE on or before $TIME?"
- ordu 7mo agoIt is a sad story, showing why all these bright ideas about using hive-mind to predict a future are not going to work. It is sad, and I can feel the author worries, but still I want to laugh. It was so fucking predictable and prediction markets didn't predict it.
- DrProtic 7mo ago[flagged]
- alkonaut 7mo agoSo Polymarket would settle the bet based on reporting from a single source? That seems to be very open to manipulation. In fact, for something as inconsequential as this, I'd just bet heavily myself if I were the reporter.
- OutOfHere 7mo agoThere exists a sensible way to handle this. It is to require at least three independent news outlet reports of an event (as defined in the bet). A related issue is that war news is heavily censored in Israel; it's difficult for news outlets to report it.
- bagacrap 7mo agoOr y'know, ban this betting activity to begin with.
- alkonaut 7mo agoIt's really hard I think. I mean if we assume sports betting is never going away (Outside of the US at least, sports betting is barely controversial and is basically now, unfortunately the oxygen of a lot of the whole sports industry). A lot of the large sports betting orgs (Unibet, Bet365, Ladbrokes, etc) allow betting on at least some contests that aren't sports. Like elections, Eurovision song contests and so on. So it becomes difficult to draw a line between the things that are legal to bet on, and those that aren't. And as we know, even if two things are clearly on either side of what should be legal but you can't make a good distinction of what makes one of them illegal, it tends to be the case that both remain legal. I think the easier short term fix for this is to have KYC laws and actually enforce them.
- OutOfHere 7mo agoIt already is not accessible in the US, although ideally it should be in the same of freedom. If you are from the US and don't value personal freedom, you are free to leave it, as it is a core tenet of what is American. Making death threats to a journalist or anyone already is illegal. There is zero reason to ban betting considering the sensible mitigation that was noted.
- evklein 7mo agoI'm imagining something probably horrible and fascinating at the same time: You could almost imagine world events being "democratized" by these markets at this point - a significant event will happen (or not happen) by the grace of who is betting on what outcomes and how much volume is at stake. If you subscribe to the view of human history as being staked to material outcomes, then at some point the PolyMarket betting volume becomes an important variable. Betting volume on an event may subsume the actual material interests. A terse example: two rival kingdoms exist, and it is generally known that kingdom A wants to annex a sliver of the other's fertile interfluve. General consensus is that this will someday happen. Now introduce PolyMarket, what happens? You have people in both kingdoms (and the rest of the world) betting on when/if it will happen. At some point, maybe the betting skews more towards the annexation never happening, and the volume continues to rise as the scales are more tipped. At some point then kingdom A has to contend with the massive amount of value they will subsequently create or destroy if they choose to pursue annexation. Individual actors within the working bureacracy of kingdom A will inevitably use the privileged information at their power to enrich themselves via the market, further tilting or manipulating things in one direction.
- dbspin 7mo agoUnfortunately what you're describing is precisely the opposite of the meaning of 'democratised'. A more accurate term would be commoditised. In this case the capacity to manipulate events becomes as tied to wealth as it is to access to information.
- evklein 7mo agoYeah, I really only mean 'democratized' in the sense that there's suddenly a populace of influence. Whether or not that influence is 'fair' in a democratic sense is clearly not the case, but there's a tipping point in how influential it actually is. If you're an elected lawmaker, and there's a bill on the floor which gives your district $500,000 in hospital funding but there's $10,000,000,000 in volume just on the 'no' side of the bet, how's that going to influence your decision making?
- alistairSH 7mo ago
- recursivedoubts 7mo agoSooner or later a college athlete is gonna get killed for missing a shot. Freedom ain't free I guess.
- dlenski 7mo agoYes. Or for making a shot. If you read some of the now-copious reporting about gamblers targeting athletes with death threats, you'll see that they have people screaming at them and threatening them violently both for performing badly and for performing well. Truly unhinged and alarming that gambling has been legalized and marketed so quickly and so extensively, in so many forms.
- elicash 7mo agoRelated to your comment, see Nate Silver's take on the NBA gambling scandal. "Player props are inherently more subject to manipulation because only one player needs to be involved in rigging the outcome. [...] Even as someone more sympathetic to gambling than most people you’re probably reading on this story, I’m not sure I’d really care if player prop bets were banned entirely. They produce abusive behavior toward players. They also often put team and individual performance into tension with one another..." https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-nba-gambling-scandal-explained https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-nba-gambling-scandal-explai...
- Lliora 7mo agoPrediction markets need mandatory cooling-off periods for high-stakes events. When we ran internal markets at my previous company - employee count 12k - we saw death threats within 48 hours of any market exceeding $50k. The pattern was consistent: above that threshold, someone always had enough money at risk to abandon civil discourse. We capped individual positions at $5k and threats dropped to zero. Polymarket's anonymity makes this worse - real money plus pseudonymity equals harassment.
- eek2121 7mo agoDefinitely an unpopular opinion: The whole with the internet is anonymity. Keep in mind, I support an anonymous internet, however, political interests, corporate interests, hate groups, etc. are all using it to undermine society. Example: When Twitter ("X") suddenly started showing the locations of accounts, a lot of folks with MAGA talking points were shown to be anywhere except the U.S. Accounts with millions of followers and tons of influence have never even set foot in the U.S. Another Example: Polymarket (not the "US" one) is anonymous. Because of this, events like the headline talks about happens. Certain government leaders worldwide could easily be seeding the bets, and playing the market, and you would never know. Anonymity is nice, however, it is being taken advantage of for power plays. This is why we can't have nice things.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- ubj 7mo agoThere was an interesting article in the Atlantic recently where a journalist spent a year participating in sports gambling. Part of the article discusses the effect it had on his psychology towards participants he had put his money on. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/online-sports-betting-app-addiction/686061/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/online-sports-b... Sports is one thing, but the potential for threats / intimidation towards news reporting, politics, etc. is a huge concern.
- gcr 7mo agoSpace Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is a great game, I highly recommend it to anyone in this thread. It opens with a content warning saying that the player will likely become very angry at least once when a baby who you are financially incentivized to watch crash and burn pulls their life together, and that's okay. I appreciate that they're explicitly covering this psychological phenomenon.
- emsign 7mo agoOceania is at war with Eurasia and has always been at war with Eurasia!!!
- banannaise 7mo agoI would expect a dramatic rise in things like this, because they can be (1) monetized, and (2) scaled. Polymarket and Kalshi allow you to monetize almost any outcome (as they themselves will tell you is the goal). Therefore, there is profit available if you can predict the outcome better than other people, or if you can influence the outcome. But I don't think people have really noticed that profit is also available if you can influence other people's predictions to manipulate the price and sell at a profit. Spread disinformation. Suppress information that hurts your position. Sending death threats to journalists? Sounds like an avenue to accomplish that. Want to do that at scale? Agentic AI can help. We need to severely restrict prediction markets, and soon, or there's going to be a lot of adversarial activity at scale, and we can't always predict what kind of activity that will be.
- RevEng 7mo agoThe same thing already happens with the stock market.
- GolfPopper 7mo agoWhy is everyone assuming at face value that the threats are actually coming from gamblers, and not from the Israeli government trying to downplay the domestic impact of the war?
- tptacek 7mo agoProbably because it's 100% par for the course for online betting, unless you think it's Israel sending death threats to French tennis players for blowing people's prop bets.
- Pay08 7mo agoI've seen crazier conspiracy theories...
- andrewflnr 7mo agoBecause that's a silly idea. When missiles are flying over people's heads and everyone is running into bomb shelters, Israel would get approximately no benefit from nitpicking a single story, certainly not enough to justify a harassment campaign involving lots of people with cover stories. On the other hand, gamblers have a very concrete motivation and a long history of doing unhinged things to get it. There's no reason to look for depth.
- litoE 7mo agoBecause it's in the Israeli government's interest to make the threat from Iran look bigger, rather than smaller?
- Pay08 7mo agoYou could reasonably argue that both are in their interest, and which one they choose to push is down to a decision. The war already has popular support in Israel (last time I checked, the quoted number was 86% in support) so the government wouldn't gain all that much from extra fearmongering, especially with the messaging coming from the Iranian government.
- eknkc 7mo agoI believe this is the bet in question: https://polymarket.com/event/iran-strikes-israel-on https://polymarket.com/event/iran-strikes-israel-on This caught my attention today as it was in dispute and there were a lot of comments (moslty angry). I like browsing polymarket (never placed a bet myself but it is fun to see the prices). Always thought this would kill someone someday..
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- nusl 7mo agoPolymarket and similar platforms are a cancer and need to be shut down. This is an early symptom of something that will become much, much worse in an increasing manner. Stories like these make more people aware of the platform, adding users and further degrading humanity.
- tootie 7mo agoIt's gambling which has been a bane forever. It poisoned the NBA even before the internet.
- padjo 7mo agoIt's far worse than regular gambling
- nusl 7mo agoPeople are getting death threats for writing news articles as part of their job. How is this comparable?
- AlexandrB 7mo agoProfession athletes get threats for winning games which is part of their job. It's exactly the same. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/09/sport/athlete-abuse-betting-sport-intl https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/09/sport/athlete-abuse-betting-s...
- nusl 7mo agoFair. I suppose what's changed is the breadth/scope
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- logicchains 7mo agoIt's impossible to shut them down without implementing completely totalitarian internet controls that would make even the Chinese government blush. That's the nature of the defi ecosystem.
- ccppurcell 7mo agoHere's a bet for you: someone will be assassinated to manipulate a poly market bet by 2040.
- awakeasleep 7mo agoI’m surprised no one has mentioned that there was no safe course of action for the journalist because there was money on both sides of this outcome. No matter what he reported, he would have the other side threatening him.
- ntonozzi 7mo agoPerhaps because he is a journalist whose job is to report reality, not avoid threats?
- bigyabai 7mo agoAvoiding threats is non-optional for most Israeli journalists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_the_Gaza_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Censor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Censor
- yonixw 7mo agoThe reason no one responds to this list is because it's just one big gish gallop It's enough to see that you brought a link to the Israeli Military Censor to hint at a conspiracy, to understand who you're dealing with. But even if you go into the list, you'll see at the top that those who were shot were in the middle of the battle, where Israeli forces were surprised, to the point of massacre alongside civilians. And there, it turns out, they didn't shoot to save themselves by the skin of their teeth, but simply wanted to kill journalists. Also, a quick search shows that "Mohammad Jarghoun" ("מוחמד ג'רגון") was not a journalist at all, but a media worker, that according to the CPJ [1], during wartime he receives journalistic status. (Also not mentioned in AJ [2]. what a surprise...) Another comment to the pantheon of "the most logical failures, in the fewest words". And then no one understands why the ICC will never consider such reports.. [1]: https://www.the7eye.org.il/501320 https://www.the7eye.org.il/501320 [2]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/10/at-least-six-palestinian-journalists-killed-in-israeli-strikes-on-gaza https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/10/at-least-six-pales...
- smadge 7mo agoI found it interesting that the bettors who threatened the journalist accused him of being motivated to manipulate the market. The journalist was motivated to report honestly, the bettors were the one trying to manipulate the market by changing the reporting.
- lyu07282 7mo ago[dead]
- cindyllm 7mo ago[dead]
- alsetmusic 7mo ago[flagged]
- keeda 7mo agoConspiracy theory: the missile hit an unpopulated area. Would it have been possible for someone in charge of intercepting incoming missiles to have been in on this bet? I know these things are automated, because human control would be too slow... but I wonder if there's an angle here. Won't be the first time someone on the inside made money on classified Israeli plans: https://www.timesofisrael.com/two-indicted-for-using-classified-info-to-place-online-bets-on-military-operations/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/two-indicted-for-using-classif... Deeper conspiracy theory: could the military actors involved in these wars fund themselves via betting markets? A 14M bet could fund a lot of drones, probably more than the cost of drones required to achieve a certain outcome ;-)
- unstyledcontent 7mo agoI don't know the case of this particular situation, but its certainly plausible that people will make decisions based on trying to secure a certain bet outcome. The prediction markets are clearly not a passive presence...
- gus_massa 7mo agoMy unsupported non-conspiracy opinion: A) They notice that it would land in the middle of nowhere and decided to not destroy it. It's better keep the interceptors for one that is going to hit an important target. B) They partially intercepted it, perhaps only broke the motor or a fin, but the explosive head was intact. So instead of going to an important target, it crashed and exploded in the middle of nowhere.
- dlenski 7mo ago(A) is extremely plausible. It is well-known that Iron Dome specifically avoided targeting rockets for interception when they not going to land in areas with people or infrastructure. The main reason for this is because the interceptors are very scarce and costly.
- null_deref 7mo agoNot a conspiracy theory, IDF official policy is to not use interceptors when the missile is confirmed by calculations to hit unpopulated areas. (This calculation does not work for every type of missile or on every occasion)
- emsign 7mo agoThe gamblers would have had a much easier time convincing a journalism LLMs that their article was "a lie".
- hermitcrab 7mo agoHuge kudos to the journalist for standing up for his principals.
- derangedHorse 7mo agoReminiscent of Jim Bell and his idea for an assassination market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell Except this is even crazier because the bets aren't on people dying, it's about a reportable event. Any of Polymarket's silence in voicing whether the outcome was determined by this unwilling participant's writing makes them complicit. When there's a single source of truth, it makes a target for vested parties that doesn't benefit from the security the platform and their employees get from hosting the bet.
- JohnMakin 7mo agoThis is a major example why we can't have these things, unfortunately. It sucks because they can be powerful tools, but you're never going to be able to fully police this behavior as one of these platforms.
- danny_codes 7mo agoGambling has a heavy association with criminality. By allowing open gambling we must also accept the externalities. Or we could, you know, not legalize gambling.
- JohnMakin 7mo agoI do not think it is so clear cut as legalize/not legalize. Current legislation often doesn't even consider this gambling - however, even if you took the viewpoint that making it illegal helps, you then have to accept the externalities that arise - crime rings will develop that offer the services, and now their users are criminals and completely vulnerable to any amount of bad/malicious practices there.
- danny_codes 7mo agoWhich, historically, is a much smaller and easier problem than legalized, unregulated gambling. We already have a model for this in the casino system. Like sure, there’s some small black market here, but it’s relatively minuscule.
- squibonpig 7mo agoTo be fair gambling, like criminality, has been illegal. Similar to mobs running speakeasies.
- sam0x17 7mo agoI really wonder whether privacy would actually be the answer here --- prediction markets as they are now where the odds are public really shouldn't be called prediction markets, they should be called "outcome-shaping markets" because largely that is what they do, they let people shape real-world outcomes with massive amounts of liquidity. If instead these were privacy protocols where you can see how much liquidity is on a specific market, but no one can decrypt how much liquidity is on each side until the outcome executes (i.e. using threshold encryption, commit reveal, etc), you'd have a very different situation where your ability to predict in advance is what gets rewarded and there is no ability to "copy trade"
- geor9e 7mo agoSurely I am misreading what you mean here. But your comment very much reads like you think "Iran strikes Israel on March 10" at 25% odds is what in fact caused Iran to strike Israel on March 10. I'll search the space of other interpretations in the mean time, but if you could help me out here and clarify…
- sam0x17 7mo agoI'm not even talking about the specific situation. The problem with prediction markets that has been talked about for months is the predictions themselves are being used as an indicator that "thing will happen" and eventually there is so much liquidity on certain markets that the market determines the outcome not the other way around
- poontunia 7mo ago[dead]
- bethekidyouwant 7mo ago“who decides” whether a fact is true or not - Apparently, this is an unsolved problem. Also, I’m curious, who actually decides in this case? Someone who works at Polly market, who is immune to propaganda no doubt?
- Legend2440 7mo agoNo, they have a decentralized crypto-based system where people propose a resolution to the bet, then token holders vote. https://docs.polymarket.com/concepts/resolution https://docs.polymarket.com/concepts/resolution
- waffletower 7mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- db48x 7mo ago> … libertine … Seriously? At least look up what words mean before you thesaurus them into your ideas.
- slashdev 7mo agoThere are lots of bets on Polymarket about when certain politicians cease to be the leader of the country. Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Mojtaba Khamenei, Zelensky, etc. If they die, those markets are resolved in a predictable way. Death pools already exist, and it's a matter of time before we see an assassination attempt motivated by it.
- littlestymaar 7mo agoWe're already seeing “insider gambling” from the current administration so I'm pretty convinced we'll see assassinations motivated by polymarket gains alone soon enough.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 7mo agoI suppose the extreme take would be that it becomes a de facto bounty hunting platform
- waffletower 7mo agoIt is a lot simpler and fairer to tax payers, due to high litigation costs, to simply make adhoc SaaS betting, as Polymarket provides, illegal. Why should tax payers have to pay for the regulation costs and, more broadly, society pay for the obvious disruption vectors arising from arbitrary speculation?
- jacquesm 7mo ago
- insane_dreamer 7mo agoPolymarkets should be banned altogether or as highly regulated as casinos.
- asdff 7mo agoWait until you find out the most profitable casinos are on reservation land not subject to state gaming regulation. Polymarket might consider a similar play.
- Daves 7mo agoA reminder that Donald Trump Jr is an advisor to both Kalshi and Polymarket (with his firm also investing in Polymarket). Gambling (yes, this is gambling yet not subject to its industry regulations) is a public health crisis and the US government is too corrupt and intentionally ossified to react.
- masklinn 7mo ago> the US government is too corrupt and intentionally ossified to react The trump administration is not too ossified to react, it's in full support of. It dropped two investigations into polymarket mid-2025, and polymarket is crypto-adjacent, a field which the trump family takes full advantage of.
- ryoshu 7mo agoI have a theory that prediction markets will becomes hyperstition engines. This is a rather... violent example.
- Eufrat 7mo agoI mean, all of these behaviors: - Blatant insider trading - Angry people who were invested in an outcome These are just a few of the reasons why such prediction markets were not permitted in the first place. It’s just incredibly toxic and creates vicious externalities. There is no way that it is healthy if you allow people to put gobs of money on any outcome because it just incentivizes toxic behavior in an endless positive feedback loop.
- BLACKCRAB 7mo ago[dead]
- margalabargala 7mo agoAs someone generally against gambling, I think there's a fair point to be made that Polymarket and similar sites are not fundamentally different from e.g. sports betting. The issue of bribing/threatening a sports player to throw a game has existed for over a century. It's not a new problem. The only thing special about Polymarket is the expansion of surface area. My preferred solution would be to just ban it all, or if you really want to allow sports betting only allow betting on the outcome of events happening in the venue one is physically in. The existence of sports betting absolutely encourages people to throw matches and the existence of X betting absolutely encourages people to try to make X come about. Strong regulation and legal consequences could potentially fix this. We don't see tons of people shorting a company and then bombing that company's HQ.
- derf_ 7mo ago> Strong regulation and legal consequences could potentially fix this. There are regulations. E.g., in the US, 17 CFR § 40.11 prohibits contracts on "terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or an activity that is unlawful under any State or Federal law" [0]. The problem is that those responsible for enforcing those regulations are currently uninterested in doing so [1]. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/40.11 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/40.11 [1] https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9183-26 https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9183-26
- margalabargala 7mo agoYeah, regulations are only as strong as the consequences given those who break them. If people can threaten journalists for money and get away with it, they will. If people who threaten journalists over money are sent to prison, then after a brief transition period it will mostly stop.
- tuple 7mo agoIt's braindead easy to anonymously threaten people on the internet. It's getting easier to steal identities or create new ones out of whole cloth and cypto wallets means you can't functionally know where the money comes from. I'm not sure attempting to punish people you can't realistically identify can be considered an effective strategy. Punishing a corporate entity however is much easier.
- blurbleblurble 7mo agoPolymarket heads think they're so smart as they simultaneously reveal a total lack of awareness about feedback loops.
- kqr 7mo agoMany of the comments in this discussion remind me of that Rothchild analysis in the second half of the 1800s when France had problems with a revolution. > A friend asked Baron Rothschild what he was doing in response to Paris Commune: > “Why,” replied the famous banker musingly, “French government bonds are selling at sixty-five. I bought five millions yesterday.” > “What!” exclaimed the friend. “Bought bonds? Why, France is without a government, and the sewers of Paris are running red with blood!” > “Yes, it is deplorable,” remarked the baron, “but if the sewers of Paris were not running red with blood, I could not buy bonds at this price. France will survive this terrible calamity, as she survived the Revolution, and the seven coalitions against her of all the powers of Europe. Her credit will again be the highest of any nation, and her bonds will sell again above par.” People who oppose gambling tend to see this as a foreign capitalist selfishly making money off of the dire situation of the French people. People who do not oppose gambling see it as financial support of the French in their times of trouble when others have abandoned them.
- bhickey 7mo agoThis has nothing to do with opposing gambling. It has everything to do with, say, opposing gamblers poisoning horses to win bets.
- cbluth 7mo agoYou applied the razor very well here. There will always be a market.
- arduanika 7mo agoSurely you can see the difference between dealing in a legitimate asset like a government bond, which requires a market of buyers and sellers, versus this new extraneous layer of prediction contracts, where the only defensible economic purpose is some weak information signal.
- mikkupikku 7mo agoGambling is degenerate and inclined to cause crime and criminal behavior. Ban this shit already, decriminalization of gambling is a failed experiment.
- elicash 7mo agoHere's what a spokesperson for Polymarket said: "Polymarket condemns the harassment and threats directed at Emanuel Fabian, or anyone else for that matter. This behavior violates our terms of service and has no place on our platform or anywhere else. Prediction markets depend on the integrity of independent reporting. Attempts to pressure journalists to alter their reporting undermine that integrity and undermine the markets themselves." https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/polymarket-betting-site-condemns-threats-against-times-of-israel-reporter/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/polymarket-bett... (I'd prefer if it said they were evaluating whether to limit the types of bets accepted to make the possibility of harassing journalists less likely.)
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago> whether to limit the types of bets accepted Do we have evidence for the types who indulge in death threats concentrating around certain bet genres?
- elicash 7mo agoYes in sports. NCAA is trying to specifically get player prop bets banned in part because they are more likely not just to be corrupt, but also they specifically mention player safety. https://www.ncaa.org/news/2026/1/15/media-center-ncaa-urges-gambling-commissions-to-eliminate-prop-bets.aspx https://www.ncaa.org/news/2026/1/15/media-center-ncaa-urges-... I linked this elsewhere, but I found Nate Silver's take interesting here. He specifically takes on the problem of player prop bets and says they produce abusive behavior toward players. https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-nba-gambling-scandal-explained https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-nba-gambling-scandal-explai... I think it's reasonable to research if there's some equivalent to player prop bets in other contexts, like anything that might hinge on what a reporter writes. There's the safety angle and there's also just the "more likely to be corrupted" angle. Like I said in my original comment, I'd just like them to evaluate this.
- mayneack 7mo ago"this violates our TOS" is a classic Accountability Sink. "Polymarket has a rule against harassment, so we obviously did all we could!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unaccountability_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unaccountability_Machine
- Thoreandan 7mo agoThis reminds me of the 9/11-era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_Analysis_Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_Analysis_Market ...which was shut down in 2003 "after multiple US senators condemned it as an assassination and terrorism market".
- aussiegreenie 7mo agoAustralians gamble more than anyone on Earth but the idea that people "invest" huge money, whether or not missiles explode in a country at war is crazy. It was said Australians would bet on two flies climbing up a wall. But this is madness.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- kkfx 7mo agoThat's the limit of smart-contracts: they can't know the real world, so they depend on "Oracles"/external sources who can be corrupted or coerced, and so even if the foundation is guaranteed in the code, what the code uses as a reference is not...
- coppsilgold 7mo agoAt the time of the threats the odds were likely very skewed, as in over 99% to one side. For events where a single article could be a fulcrum, it seems like a feasible strategy to wager on the 1% and then try to manipulate the writer into changing the outcome. The chances of success will be low, but likely higher than 1% therefore the expected value[1] may be high. Most people on Polymarket are gamblers and have no idea what they are doing, but the so-called sharps know how to play the game: Purely on expected value, for example if the market shows an 80% chance on an outcome but the sharp concludes that it's actually 90% then they buy it, then if the market rises above 90% but their conclusions don't change then they sell their shares and if it continues to rise they may even buy the other position. Evaluating the real odds of an event can of course be very hard, having insider information will greatly help here - it need not even pertain to the event itself, just something that will improve your model. [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value>
- mvdtnz 7mo ago> Most people on Polymarket are gamblers Every person on Polymarket is a gambler. By definition.
- LoganDark 7mo agoSome people are insiders though.
- November_Echo 7mo agoI think they mean "most people are gamblers _who_ have no idea what they're doing"
- Dylan16807 7mo agoIf a casino sets up a normal roulette wheel but pays out red at 1.5x and black at 2.5x, betting 5% of your bankroll on black over and over is "gambling" but it's not "gambling", if you get what I'm saying.
- QuantumNoodle 7mo agoStill no idea how a polymarket is legal with all the insider trading opportunities.
- Etheryte 7mo agoInsider trading is not about fairness, it's about theft. If you insider trade on the stock market then, in a crude simplification, you steal profits from the company you have a fiduciary duty to, or some extension of that. It has nothing to do with a level playing ground, every trading company out there is trying to find information others can't and then trade on it.
- LadyCailin 7mo agoWhat? How do you figure that? If I happen to know that my company is about to report very bad quarterly numbers, so I sell all my stock, then it tanks, I’ve just screwed whoever bought the stock, that in the most cases, will be some random people. The company does not benefit or hurt from stock prices unless they are buying back or issuing more stock.
- enoint 7mo agoThat’s how the criminal penalties are framed.
- Etheryte 7mo agoBecause that's what the law says? And the company most definitely does benefit and hurt from a fluctuating stock price, it's one of the key drivers behind financing conditions. What you describe is a simpleton view of the financial market.
- Uptrenda 7mo agoIt seems strange to me that a single source would be used to resolve a bet any way. You have all this crap to make a platform "decentralized" and then it all collapses down to: "bruh, it happened, I swear." It really makes me realize how often blockchain / decentralization / "cryptography" projects are nothing more than pseudo-technical theater. Peak hype-driven development.
- Analemma_ 7mo agoThat would require tons of infrastructure and investment on Polymarket's side (more expense) and also reduce the number of permitted wagers (less revenue). i.e, never gonna fucking happen, it's way easier and more lucrative to have a hands-off approach, and only intervene for the occasional high-profile misfire.
- Pay08 7mo agoApparently resolving bets requires at least 3 sources. At the same time, ToI is the largest news outlet in Israel (that reports in English), so I imagine it'd get a lot of the focus.
- jedberg 7mo agoIt seems like the easy solution is for polymarket to just unwind the transaction and give everyone their money back, no harm no foul.
- travisjungroth 7mo agoThat would mean the people who did the death threats get their money back.
- jedberg 7mo agoYes. And then they won't want to kill the journalist anymore. Because otherwise they are going to lose all their money.
- travisjungroth 7mo agoIt's a bad idea to reward death threats like that. There would be more of them in the future.
- marysminefnuf 7mo agoAt some point betting markets are going to become a form of market where people are effectively posting bounties. You bet 1,000,000 for someone to murder a public official then someone gets in on the action and hires a hitman to do the job.
- gzread 7mo agoWhy does this block VPNs?
- up2itnow0822 7mo ago[dead]
- coolguysailer 7mo agoFor some reason this reminds me of the Byzantine Generals problem. The fact is that unless you were there we don't really know how accurate any of these statements are. The video evidence is fine but I can whip something up in veo3 in 2 minutes. So while it's not a timing issue exactly (the truth might come out eventually), like the og byzantine generals problem, it is one of incentives toward deception. The real goal here isn't the payout, it's visibility into an active war. Polymarket is gambling at it's core, but the information it surfaces is used as justification for massive financial (and military) deals. I suspect this is likely what is happening here. Whereas before you might report on something and perhaps that's it, because news is always unreliable, now you report on something that has a measurable effect on some deal pipeline. Good on you for reporting on this. Difficult problem to solve tbh.
- powerpcmac 7mo ago[flagged]
- nektro 7mo agonightmare fuel
- ergocoder 7mo agoThat's the issue with allowing people to bet on public events. It's odd that we allow this to happen.
- GeoSys 7mo ago[dead]
- firebot 7mo agoThat's when you just gotta kill yourself. Can't kill what's already dead.
- throwaway85825 7mo agoSounds like polymarket needs to add "will bettors kill this man" as something you can bet on.
- termwatch 7mo agoRun away from Polymarket
- ArtificeAccount 7mo agoI am not surprised that this happened. This is the logical conclusion of betting. Like in Muay Thai competitions, some efficient attacks are underutilized because they give the performer fewer points, which can be bad for the people betting on them. And their funding comes from the betting, so they change the sport to match what the gamblers want. You can't introduce gambling into a system without changing other parts of the system.
- leftytak 7mo agoRegardless of which side you are on, you are going to have enemies when it comes to the Middle East politics. If you are a journalist, it comes with the territory, I'm sure you know.
- arclegger 7mo agoI don't know who needs to hear it but, you can't predict the future. You can get close, but its never a guarantee unless you have insider info, and even that can change at the last moment.