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Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

timesofisrael.com

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Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#671

Post by gcr »

ubj wrote: post #320

There 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-b... Sports is one thing, but the potential for threats / intimidation towards news reporting, politics, etc. is a huge conce…

Space 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.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#673

Post by gcr »

Hammershaft wrote: post #185
gcr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

B-b-but futarchy and unbiased decisionmaking means well-calibrated markets could be a net good for society!! /hj

The question isn't whether futarchy isn't perfect, it's whether its better than our existing democracy.

Well, we're discovering some really fascinating and pervasive failure cases of proto-futarchy. Please update your priors.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#674

Post by Terr_ »

kqr wrote: post #661
Terr_ wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or whether the company will fail or have a bad IPO.

If I propose odds based on survival tables for other companies of that age (I think for six years, the annual risk is 9 %), which side of the bet would you like to take?

The, uh, earnestness of your reply makes me suspect you missed the subtext.

We're not interested in expected value or winning the bet. If anything, it's the opposite: The "goal" is to lose the bet due to a situation caused by the pattern of betting, with something beyond any actuarial tables because it's not an independent event.

If I can presume to speak for up-thread commenters, we've agreed the system is inherently exploitable and harmful, and we're either (A) imagining the schadenfreude of using that same evil to harm the people who promote it, or at least (B) imagining them forced to fear the monster they're unleashing on others, so that they take steps to limit it.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#675

Post by elicash »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #666
elicash wrote: post #660

Here'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…

> 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?

Yes 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-...

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-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.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#676

Post by kasey_junk »

waffletower wrote: post #638
zeckalpha wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Smith actually would be against stuff like this. He gets misrepresented.

It really doesn't matter here, in specific, if he is misrepresented. He came up with the "invisible hand" concept and he didn't consider its shadow/consequences. He shouldn't be personally faulted for it, he was just one man sharing his thinking a long time ago. Living people are to blame for not correcting for these shortcomings enough. I learned that it would have been best to have just said laissez-faire capitalis…

You’ll not find “the invisible hand” in wealth of nations as a major concept. It was a throw away phrase that wasn’t a central part of his writing.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#677

Post by casey2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #566
andai wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>outcome shaping markets I heard something remarkable many years ago, that there are websites on the dark web where you can bet on which day someone is going to die. In other words you can pay to have them assassinated in a very indirect way. It's like kickstarter, for assassinations. When enough funds are raised, a willing volunteer simply places a bet on the day when they plan to carry out the deed. So they win the…

You are describing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market

Not acknowledging a problem doesn't make it go away. Isolating people decreases the problem, but alienates them from the wider economy. I'd rather live in a world with open, regulated [0] , assassination markets even if that increases the amount of money behind assassinations.

Of course I'd rather live in a world with no muder and death, but seriously, grow up.

[0]the value of a human life is $xM + $yM for their occupations, so now payout for hits below that amount

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#678

Post by munk-a »

munk-a wrote: post #538
xvector wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polymarket's founder is Shayne Coplan, 27-year old "youngest self-made billionaire" (why do all billionaires seem devoid of ethics?) A sane system would just throw him in jail until his illegal betting market implements KYC.

> (why do all billionaires seem devoid of ethics?) Because no ethical person would accumulate a billion dollars. An ethical person would share the wealth they're creating with those around them instead of hording that wealth. What can you do with 100 million that you couldn't do with 10?

Just as a note - I feel like there's a lack of understanding of how difficult it is to get a billion dollars. It isn't something you can just trip into and I think the concentration of that much wealth really goes against something in most people's approach to the world where generosity increases as you gain more wealth. To capture that much wealth as a business owner you have to be extremely stingy with compensation to those who accompanied you along that path which is not how most people tend to operate - more often people share that wealth and make sure those around them also benefit from the work even if the structure of corporations may technically entitle the owner to 100% of the upside.

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#679

Post by derf_ »

margalabargala wrote: post #624

As 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…

> 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

[1] https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9183-26

Re: Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

#680

Post by SamBam »

jacquesm wrote: post #565
waffletower wrote: post #552

[flagged]

We could gamble on when Polymarket's operators die.

How about something that they would see more as a genuine threat?

Bet on whether they get into a car accident, and then see what happens if all of a sudden that number starts spiking towards 100%.

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