Prediction 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.
Journalists do not normally work like that. That might be how beefs are fought on social media, but of course screenshots are easy to fake anyway.
I don't understand what your point is.
What is the reader assumed to do about an article that does not bring any proof?
The video of the missile exploding is also easy to fake, but it's an important element behind the reporting.
I'm assuming you've never read a news article before, because news articles routinely contain reported speech without having to provide extra evidence of that speech having taken place.
You're being dismissive and aggressive while dodging the questions.
I routinely read the news, and I've been taught in school that critical reading involves doubting and focusing on facts, sources and proofs. No sources and verifiable proofs? No facts.
Which is why the journalist put emphasis on his sources behind the missile attack: he knows how much sources and proofs are important.
If you can fake screenshots, why not fake them, which is something that can be at least analyzed for tampering?
Even more: the author mentions X public replies, where are the links?
Narrowly (skipping the question of whether this journalist should have included copies of evidence), GP is right: most journalists with verified source material quote it/assert what it contains, rather than linking or copying it verbatim. That’s how serious journalism has always worked. The reputation of a newsroom is understood to back up a reporter’s assertion about their source.
Whether or not it should work that way is a separate question. But claiming that raw sources not being included is cause for suspicion is incorrect.
Addendum: A significant exception to that rule is when the journalist themselves is the source or an involved party in the story, e.g. when Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic was included in a Signal chat with US government officials discussing war plans: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-a...
In such cases, the journalist likely will publish raw data/screenshots, since they're functioning both as the source and the reporter.
Making up sources as a journalist and being found out will result in a professional death sentence. It’s simply completely irredeemably unacceptable. That’s why it can be a convention that journalists don’t provide their raw sources.
That is correct, but it's not to media's credit. Most journalists say basically, "Trust me, I'm the authority, I wouldn't be allowed to say this if it were simply lies. I could prove it to you but I won't, at worst I'll be forced to prove it to my peers. (And you aren't one, peasant)." They practically never link to the scientific paper they just reported on, certainly not to anything that could let us check politically controversial claims ourselves.
And how could it be otherwise? You aren't the customer. Ads, or worse, billionaire political patronage, is what pays the bills for media companies. Their authority - the blind trust people have in them - is what makes them valuable for their actual customers. They're not doing science, the last thing they want is to make it easy to check their work (although, maybe I'm too charitable to scientists too here, if they make it easier to check their work it's often the bare minimum, but I digress).
One of the original points of WikiLeaks was to make a kind of journalism where claims were easy to check from the sources. But you can see how controversial that was.
Quoting vs providing screenshots makes exactly 0 difference regarding level of proof. Faking an email or WhatsApp message is about 2 minutes of work.
1. Fake emails or screenshots can still be analyzed and questioned and they are regularly debunked.
2. The author mentions X replies, those are public, where are they?
I'm gonna stand by my opinion: you deliver information, you provide all the evidence that is sensible to share. That's what journalism, especially investigative journalism does, and OSint can go a long way in helping.
> Fake emails or screenshots can still be analyzed and questioned and they are regularly debunked.
How? If I get two phone numbers and send myself a message and make a screenshot, how are you going to debunk that? It’s a legit screenshot, you have no way of verifying anything.
And I can also just import self written emails into thunderbird and take a screenshot. There’s nothing to analyze.
I agree that he could have linked the Public stuff though.
Why 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.
Prediction 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)
1. 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.
Illegal or not, trying to ban it won't work.
You'll just push it underground and it will get even worse.
The cat is out of the bag.
I posted this elsewhere in this thread, but the “it’ll just go underground” claim seems silly. The negative effects of driving a gambling market to the economic fringe are already happening in the mainstream market: fixing, extortion, death threats, etc.
What makes you think that driving betting underground (which means far fewer people will participate) would be worse than the status quo?
You don't need to "try to ban it", you ban it.
If your argument is "people are going to bet and influence world events on the dark web", the argument ignores economics.
The whole point is that the wrong financial incentives exist, the dark web does not provide them, it's hard to access and liquidity is small.
E.g. Trump insiders are unlikely to "tor their iran/venezuela predictions in Monero" and try to influence the events at the same time, let alone how complex would such a system be.
Defeatist nonsense, and wrong. The US was regulating this until Trump. A friendly regulatory environment is the only way paying out these bets at scale is possible.
"Pushing it underground" discourages the majority of bettors from using it, and that is a good thing.
>"Pushing it underground" discourages the majority of bettors from using it, and that is a good thing.
But don't you think that will be the "good" majority? And the "bad" minority will continue using the underground version?
> the "bad" minority will continue using the underground version?
…which they already did before this market was made mainstream.
Why is everything you like protected from being banned?
This is an argument against all laws, which probably deserves more than a couple sentences.
Why do you apparently like a system that lets people bet on atrocities and then take steps to make said atrocities more likely?
So you are saying that if business entity starts a pharma company that creates a drug for some kind of novel disease, but the disease does not currently exist, they will take steps to make an epidemic of it more likely?
And you think banning it would 100% work?
and where did I say I liked it?
I'm not responding to your gish gallop BS.
Why do you (obviously) think betting markets are good?
I disagree.
Prediction markets have value for people as a source of reliable information because they tend to be very accurate compared to any other human mechanism for creating forecasts.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/pr...
There is no evidence that people betting on whether Iran will strike Israel on March 15th has any benefit. Who would be the beneficiary of that?
Are you gonna tell me residents in Tel Aviv will be able to hedge their chances of surviving tomorrow?
Nor there's evidence that providing information about the fact that US will strike Venezuela does it either.
What value any of that has? None, especially considering the perverse incentives on the other side of acting on the outcome probability for financial gain which has already happened. US executive insiders have definitely bet on US attacking Venezuela on Polymarket.
You see this as "information discovery", I see it as the fact that I can lobby for dangerous events to happen just for financial gain.
Future markets have some value in some scenarios where you can hedge the outcome.
E.g. a farmer hedging crop prices can de risk his operations.
There is a hedging and the hedge works as insurance.
What's exactly the value of betting on elections or military strikes? What's being hedged?
How can you not see the financial incentives?
We have a long history of regulating both futures, derivatives and betting for very specific reasons.
But now we've relabeled it all as information gathering and price discovery.
How can you not see how the financial incentives here are speedrunning terrible events to happen?
I'm gonna rephrase it like that: would you like for a contract to exist on whether you'll be sent to hospital tomorrow in a crash accident?
Are you gonna tell me: "well, it's information discovery and it's valuable that I can wake up knowing the odds have increased!" while ignoring that there are now people out there financially motivated to make this happen?
I think people & companies get value from these markets because they are able to plan on the basis of accurate forecasts for scenarios like potential wars and election results.
I agree that these markets also create bad incentives, I just think that on net the information provided tends to be more valuable.
> Are you gonna tell me residents in Tel Aviv will be able to hedge their chances of surviving tomorrow?
Yes, of course! If you had some advance warning your home town was likely to be struck with missiles soon, are you seriously saying you can't think of a single thing you could do to prepare? I would, at a minimum, make sure I was stocked up on first aid supplies, water, and food that I could eat without needing power or gas to cook it.
And don't you see the other part of the medal?
That there are economical incentives to make it happen just to make money?
Such events have little-to-no "wisdom of the crowds" those events decided by a handful of people. And their consequences catastrophic.
What if there was a derivative for whether you will be hit by a car tomorrow?
What would you say if there was a contract on whether your county will burst in flames this month?
Are you happy because you can hedge this event, or don't you realize the obvious peril?
> That there are economical incentives to make it happen just to make money?
I don't see how there is. The liquidity in a prediction market is not high enough to compensate for the expense of going to war.
The war was going to happen irregardless of the prediction market. The prediction market only let us know when it was going to happen with some hours to spare.
Are you talking about the same thing everyone else is?
Imagine the conversation went like this:
A: "Maybe we shouldn't sacrifice 500 virgins to the Aztec God to predict the harvest next hear?"
B "Why not? Killing virgins to predict the harvest are well calibrated (ie accurate).."
I wouldn't be able to say this with a straight face after reading this article.
Why? We have years of experimental evidence that these prediction markets are well calibrated (ie accurate).