So 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.
https://rocknblock.io/blog/how-prediction-markets-resolution...
For example, "Will Trump talk Macron before 31 of March?". Someone is going to get scammed no matter what: the market rules will set some basic resolution scenarios, but you'll find sources saying it was a letter, or sources several countries and in several languages saying that it was an exchange between their offices/assistants, or smoke signals, or god knows what, while a single US source will say they talked without any further detail, or it is simply reported 1 month after the fact when the money has long moved wallets, and then people vote based on the combination of factoids they've been exposed to. In principle the perverse incentive of voting wrong to earn money will make you lose money on the UMA itself (unless there's a coordinated effort, which has already happened, but IME it's rather rare).
Other markets are indisputable bar black swan events, like, "how many Oscars will X win", if it's 6 it's 6 and no source will say 5 or 7. That makes opening disputes 100% a money-losing option.
A related issue is that war news is heavily censored in Israel; it's difficult for news outlets to report it.
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.
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.
"Everyone I disagree with is Not A Real American and should just leave the country. Who's a Real American? Well, someone who agrees with my personal political views, of course."
utterly idiotic worldview
Ban it where exactly? If you’ve got personal knowledge of where these knuckleheads reside, speak up. It’s entirely possible that it is banned where they are and they just got a VPN and did it anyway.
Also, how does a large, national newspaper reporting on it indicate a lack of free press?