Holy shit.
Not only this is horrifying cause of the threats, it’s also very unsettling that something with such a recipe for disaster would attract so many rubes to be a working business model.
I feel like if I were trying to manipulate that market I’d be trying to bend reality in a better direction.
“If you decide to go with your ego and not with your head, you are leaving behind dozens of wealthy people from all over the world who will know that you performed market manipulation and stole from them. They know who you are, you don’t know who they are. It took them less than 5 minutes to find out exactly where you live … how often you see your lovely parents … and exactly who your … brothers and sisters are.”
So the guy threatening the journalist to change his story so the gambler can make money isn’t market manipulation, but the journalist not changing his story is…
What scary about this, and it was mentioned in the article, is how future stories by less than ethical “journalist” can be purchased so that one side can become rich. Fuck accuracy it’s all about the money.
Well it’s not like that is already the case with social media, but I would like to think there is at least some aspect of reporting that is based in ethics and truth.
Polymarket is one of many direct evidence of the impending fall of society.
It’s one of those things that would seem excessive in a story.
A place so decadent that everything was to bet for. Even as the world ended around them, they gambled on how.
Oh yeah, it is messed up and doesnt even cover the section where apparently another journalist the writer knows was bribed to try and coerce the flow of information to get that win. It basically confirms that there is already a willing lack of integrity somewhere to think it would work here.
A few hours later, a colleague from another media outlet messaged me. He said that someone he knew asked him to ask me to change the report on the missile impact in Beit Shemesh, and that it would be “negligible” for me if I did make the change.
Going further, the acquaintance even offered the journalist compensation, from his winnings, if he managed to convince me to change my report.
Polymarket is one of the largest prediction markets in the world, where users can wager their money on the likelihood of future events, using cryptocurrency, debit or credit cards, and bank transfers.
So this is a market place where rich people can bet on how gruesome poor people can die in war zones and genocides. Is this any different from the rich hunting the poor for sport? Instead of a trigger, they click a button, but it’s not that different.
Isn’t humanity awesome? Can we please start jailing these (or at this point, all) psychopaths?
Seriously, 99% of the population consists of awesome people that take care of one another. The problem is that psychopaths, like the ones from the article, have the need to be on top and control everything and we let them.
Seriously, as far as I can tell, humanity could kill a few 10.000s psychopaths and all of the sudden, no more wars, no more hunger, no more conflicts, no more senseless pollution, the world could heal and humanity could enter a phase of sustainable awesomeness.
No. I am not suggesting we kill them, it was just to make the point. However, I do feel we need to start testing people for psychopathy (as far as possible and work in better screening) to ensure we keep these fuckers from positions of power and money. We need to stop psychopaths from gaining any real power.
Hell, if it were up to me, nobody would get great power or money. I’d have a world wide wealth cap, nobody can be worth over, say 1 or 10 million. Anything over that goes to taxes. THAT will stop people.frok amassing great wealth and power and just stop this shit
For the website: I wish people were still masquerading as Anonymous and would just continuously hack this site into the ground where it belongs, next to its disgusting creators.
Fuck I hate this world :(
More like 10 million psychopaths. 4% psychopathy rate.
No. I am not suggesting we kill them
Why not?
I hate it all too.
Take me out first, please.
Most cyberpunk read today.
How that shit is not illegal is beyond me. Gambling is already predatory but outside of sports and in fucking armed conflicts is abhorrent.
We are in the crime is legal era
Time to boost this post. I have received death threats from Zionist, but I have a feeling these poly market people are scarier since they have money on the line
What a stupid world we’ve allowed to be concocted.
Past few years I’ve been reading a shitty sci-fi series. In this series there’s a race of creatures whose entire society is founded on gambling. They bet on everything, and people frequently bankrupt themselves. The moment you look at that world-building with even a little bit of scrutiny it falls apart in its stupidity.
This is even dumber.
Yup.
So uh… what are the odds on polymarket for the guy getting killed?
Can you put out a contract on someone just by betting on polymarket that they won’t die by a particular date?
Advanced money laundering skill: 100
Lmao I think technically that would work… but I also don’t know how tightly polymarket polices/moderates wagers like that.
… Will you be the one reporting it? If so, I’m sure we’ll get to know each other very well.
Gambling needs to simply be made illegal
I don’t care what your arguments are gambling needs to be made illegal
I think it’s fair for it to be legal, but only in specific locations and contexts. I think small scale gambling between friends and coworkers is fine. I think well regulated casinos are bad but serve as a deterrent to underground criminal gambling. I think having legal gambling through the internet and on your phone, advertised everywhere is a serious problem.
Nah this needs to be illegal period. Not taking questions
Find something else to do
Prohibition of vices doesn’t work, it just pushes it into organized crime. I want harm reduction more than purity
You’re interested in solutions. The person you’re replying to is only interested in hearing his own voice.
Yeah I never assume I can convince someone I’m arguing with on the internet. My goal is to convince the readers. Or entertain myself while bored at work
I agree completely. I always assume there are younger folks in the room who haven’t formed an opinion on everything yet.
It’s not just that, even us old and opinionated people can be swayed when we aren’t in the fight, given we have the wisdom to let ourselves listen to arguments. Especially if we keep seeing similar ideas from those we see as peers. It’s just that when we feel confronted most people (myself included) dig in rather than reevaluate.
Im cool with the state owning things. Its the oversize marketing budgets and no concern for harm that comes with private ownership that bugs me.
I’ve heard plenty of stories of destitute people burning all their money on state-run scratchers. It’s not a panacea.
Me too, but at least it pays for a school or something vs some rich assholes pocket. I have never seen a better acceptable solution.
It pushes them into organized crime because the state fails to provide for people’s needs not because the vice is prohibited
Next
“provide for their needs”…? What do you mean? Sure, many gamblers don’t have a very stable economic situation, but you’re implying that something like UBI would suddenly stop people from gambling or what?
I bet you one hundred dollars that you cannot enforce this.
Yes prohibition of alcohol worked so well in America, the 18th amendment, in the 1919 that 14 years later they repealed it, the 21st amendment.
Arguably prohibition did reduce alcohol consumption during that time period.
That does not mean that it “worked” in any practical sense, considering all else that was associated with it.
They should adopt the same approach they use in Sweden to fight alcoholism: tax the hell out of it. You won a million by doing “insider trading” on the most recent dumb government decision? Congratulations, you owe the IRS half a mil.
Not talking about alcohol try again
Well what is the difference? A vice is a vice. Both are used to distracte us from the daily life of contant reminder that we are just a flesh bag being controlled by a mass of fat that will decay and die at some point. While we circle around a massive black hole. So why is this one vice so different that you think that prohibition would work?
different things being vices doesn’t make them magically interchangeable
Sorry
So what makes it so different that you think that prohibition would work in this one instance?
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itt: 100 billion lemmings see the phrase “i’m not going to debate you” and immediately take up arms and move to debate positions, so as to maximize the insufferability of the platform writ large
Itt: the person saying “I’m not going to debate you” continues to respond.
Also: “I’m not going to debate you” is not some magic phrase that prevents your statement from being challenged.
In closing: I’m not going to debate you. So if you respond to this you’re a hypocrite.
i don’t know how i could have possibly been clearer that i don’t want the disjointed ramblings of debatecreatures in my inbox, but i know things like “consent” might be a foreign concept to such folk
“When I make statements on public forums that does not mean I consent to people responding to me!”
I don’t think you understand how any of this works.
for you in particular, let’s permanently rectify that situation
Thinking you can say something and avoid it being challenged by adding shit like “anything you can argue against it doesn’t matter” is the insufferable thing on display here. Almost as insufferable as another person chiming in about how insufferable those who won’t just take that at face value are.
“avoid it being challenged” dear lord. if only internet forum threads had some kind of button that would allow you to insert whatever half-baked disguised-as-a-policy-suggestion reaction one has directly into the thread. maybe then those that suffer the worst from Jubileebrain could utilize that to spew forth all their intellectual capabilities’ worth without doing themselves the disgrace of demanding dissidents put up their dukes
but then it wouldn’t be lemmy now would it
Prohibition on vices never works, it just sends the money to criminal organizations that kill people instead of capitalist companies that kill less people.
The solution is to have it be state run, remove the profit motive, and send any money gained from it to education and social services.
I don’t care about the gambling, my issue is with the advertising. They are enticing people, mostly young men, with visions of excitement and LOTS of money. They don’t show any ads of a guy losing the rent money, and having to break the news to his wife.
I don’t mind vices being legal, but I strongly object to them being marketed. Cigarettes are banned in most media, and liquor is heavily controlled. I wouldn’t mind if all marketing for all vices were prohibited.
Oohh yeah, let the state run the “gambling on genocide” and “gambling on child murder”, that sounds awesome!
Not saying it’s the best situation but if the choice is between the mob running it, capitalist corporations running it, and the state running it, I’d pick the state.
The state has an incentive to decrease problem gambling. Even if you ignore any democratic pressures from the people who don’t like gambling being pushed, the state also has to bear the cost of addicts with social services so it’s monetarily incentivized to reduce problem gambling.
Gambling addiction has one of the highest suicide rates out of any addiction, so I’m pretty sure the capitalist gambling companies right now cause more death than illegal organizations could.
most are actually struggling tmk, as the stock market (the largest casino around) is more accessible than ever.
Remove the profit motive of gambling is prohibition, what???
Remove the profit motive from “the house” side. The house is taking a cut of every bet as profit, which encourages them to advertise and increase their market and market share to get more money. Which in the end means them trying to push gambling on those with a problem because they make them the most money.
If it’s run by the state it’s not beholden to share holders who want as much profit as possible, social costs be damned. The state is at least nominally beholden to the people in a democratic system and the people generally don’t want gambling advertising to be pushed on gambling addicts.
…just make the advertising illegal
No it can work just fine if the state doesn’t become captured by those criminal profit seeking elements and we properly provide for people along the way
Not buying it
House always wins. It’s literally just a way to steal people’s money.
And in the city I live now, they passed a law for those stupid slot machines like 10 years ago.
Now they are everywhere.
You know who sits at slot machines?
Old people. Retired people.
People living off social security.It’s literally a way to steal money from people who need it most. And specifically, it was tax payers money.
So whenever I hear ,“but it creates revenue” I think. “Yeah by stealing it from the state and our seniors. Wtf. That’s not real revenue.”
And this whole idea of autonomy. Like people have to choose for themselves if they want to gamble.
We all know it’s addictive. And it’s designed to trick and manipulate people.
There is less autonomy there than you think.
I dunno, I find it hard to respect laws intending to protect people from their own choices, especially when the majority of people can enjoy the thing (or just ignore it on their own) without any problems.
Try to idiot-proof the world and the world just comes up with a better idiot.
Yeah unfortunately gamblers read that and just go…so what?
I’m ok with this simply being a religious principle
I think the “argument” is that it’s massively gray.
So much stuff can be considered gambling.
It needs to be handled. Idk how. But the term is too encompassing to just outright make illegal.
I can see why you’d want the state to regulate it. Gambling addicts have it really bad.
There will always be gambling since people can gamble points and fries
I’d vote for you to be dictator for a day to enact your policy.
If I were dictator for a day, I’d outlaw all overly loud personal vehicles. You’d be sentenced to 10 minutes strapped behind your vehicle while it’s blaring full blast, and then anyone who wants can be given guns to just go nuts on your vehicle.
I really hope their money loss is huge and will bankrupt them, because I doubt they will otherwise let any consequences for their threats
Given all the entanglements of all the big players, I genuinely wonder how much polymarket is predicting vs influencing events
This was my takeaway from the article as well. Before the death threat, how many asks did the reporter get to change their reporting? How easy is out to cut someone in by promising $5K of they change just one little word? Who would it harm?
It seriously gave me dystopian hellscape vibes.
For those asking the same question I have: how is this legal? surprisingly informative video:
The 21st century really is the “It might seem illegal, but we called it something else, so it’s not” century, especially for the US.
It’s not gambling, it’s a prediction market, or loot boxes. It’s not war, it’s a military operation. It’s not bribery, it’s lobbying. It’s not drug dealing, it’s encouraging doctors to prescribe medications which happen to be extremely addictive…
It’s not an illegal taxi service, it’s ride sharing.
The problem with the last one is that while the sacklers fucked everyone, I don’t trust politicians when they interfere in medical treatments.
How about pharmaceutical companies are not allowed to initiate an interaction with doctors or patients in any way for any reason?
If a doctor/patient has a question they can reach out. If a company has a new treatment they’ll publish findings and doctors in the field will find out through data and not marketing.
I’m on board with that. Though I’d allow them to put out standardized official press releases and catalogs of products. I’d actually prefer the AMA and FDA release catalogs of approved medications if the FDA can be shielded from political interference. As well as having the FDA put out an official summary of a product when they approve it.
Ultimately I do want physicians to be made aware of new medications, and I know they’re already busy. There’s a middle ground between no uninitiated communication and allowing unrestricted freedom to advertise and lie to physicians and patients, claiming things like that oxycontin is nonaddictive.
Love this series.
The most absurd class of prediction market bets are those where 100s or 1000s know the result before it is reported/finalized. This is one such event due to reporting delay. The 2nd most absurd class are where propaganda and “house interpretation” of outcomes can provide significant profits to those who can influence turning a $1 into a $0 outcome.
Don’t forget that people who can make the decisions can also bet.
Christ the ads on that site.
I would have posted earlier, but enabling the ads made my screen flicker and black out, and I had to restart.
I am on a 128GB RAM desktop.
Oh… Yeah I have an aggressive pihole for websites like these.
I bet it was some poorly coded piece of media. Weirdly color values sometimes makes my graphics card flicker my monitor as if it has to change its entire process.
Actually, I think it’s just a linux problem. Now it’s happening on other sites in this particular browser.
Heh…
My iPhone’s Safari crashed multiple times. Granted, it’s an iPhone 11, but still.
That is worse.
Best of luck.
So, let’s vow as a group to win a bet on Polymarket to kill the perpetrators before they kill the journalist!
