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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

#871

Post by DoctorOetker »

thayne wrote: post #850
derf_ wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/17/40.1…

Seems like bets on missile strikes would violate that...

This is the sanest reply on the thread.

During WW2 when Britain captured all incoming german spies and ran a fake german spy network, they could redirect the german V1 or V2 bombs, by misreporting what they did or didn't hit.

Allowing bets on acts of violence allows the perpetrators to assess their success rate...

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

#872

Post by arcticfox »

scoofy wrote: post #589
pindab0ter wrote: post #210

I 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 happ…

>These prediction markets incentivize the absolute worst in humanity. Just call it gambling. They aren't "prediction markets," they're just gambling. Gambling incentivizes the absolute worst in humanity.

I used to be pro-betting legalization and now I see the light. It is a corrosive influence On everything it touches. I hope there's another opportunity to put the genie back in the bottle.

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

#873

Post by abixb »

mayneack wrote: post #745
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…

"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

Looks like a fantastic book at the outset. Thanks for the suggestion.

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

#874

Post by gzread »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #838
gzread wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polymarket runs on Polygon, which, like most blockchains, has public history. If the user wasn't very careful about how they got their money into the system, it traces back to a public cryptocurrency exchange with KYC records.

Ok but if you're using it to kill people you're probably going to be pretty careful about how you got your money into the system.

You'd be very surprised. It's more likely to be a collection of internet trolls than to be organized crime

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

#875

Post by strathmeyer »

awakeasleep wrote: post #389

I’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.

[dead]

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

#876

Post by margalabargala »

basilikum wrote: post #839
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. We don't see tons of people shorting a company and then bombing that company's HQ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borussia_Dortmund_team_bus_bom...

I wouldn't say one in the last decade is "tons of people"

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

#878

Post by refulgentis »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #855
stephenbez wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were other prediction markets like Intrade which was founded in 1999. I had coworkers who made a significant amount of money doing prediction market arbitrage for the 2012 election.

Intrade confuses me. It was illegal to use Intrade as a US citizen; in fact, some people I personally know who were into that scene had to maintain foreign bank accounts. What has changed, exactly, to make Polymarket legal where Intrade was not?

Giving it to you straight: GOP SCOTUS court packing via denying Obama’s nomination led to 6-3 supermajority, and it ruled gambling legislation was a states rights issue. Sports gambling startups ate sports right up, then, innovators like YC funded companies that said “that, but for everything” and collided with a shameless pay-to-play administration, not the general “politicians take donations from companies” kind, the “name don jr as your strategic advisor” kind. (Kalshi) Now the argument that would have appeared batshit insane a decade ago, that there’s no federal way to prevent this) is de facto law of the land.

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

#879

Post by abejfehr »

gzread wrote: post #799
holmesworcester wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it becomes commonplace for existing prediction markets to get undermined by this kind of manipulation, won't that just be an opportunity for people to create better prediction markets that are less vulnerable to manipulation? And doesn't that just mean more resources and energy is going into solving the problem of determining the truth of past events (and, as a result given that these are prediction markets, the l…

If those prediction markets are patronised by people who want to manipulate it, what drives customers to the new ones? Making it less vulnerable to manipulation would entail exposing less information too. You probably wouldn't be allowed to know the current odds, which makes gambling the same as reading tea leaves.

Both sports betting and prediction markets are effectively the same as reading tea leaves anyway. You can determine the real odds in roulette or blackjack because those are closed games that have simple probabilities, but any odds given in sports betting or prediction markets are just fancy guesses

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

#880

Post by cybernoodles »

scoofy wrote: post #589
pindab0ter wrote: post #210

I 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 happ…

>These prediction markets incentivize the absolute worst in humanity. Just call it gambling. They aren't "prediction markets," they're just gambling. Gambling incentivizes the absolute worst in humanity.

I feel like we need a new word for this because it is far worse than gambling when you can effectively put a hit on someone.
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