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Comment by elicash | Hacker News Reader

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 markets themselves."

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/polymarket-bett...

(I'd prefer if it said they were evaluating whether to limit the types of bets accepted to make the possibility of harassing journalists less likely.)

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"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.

It's a little light on rigor. There's a lot of "X happened before Y therefore X caused Y" but I think it's a really good articulation of some of the problems it tackles.

> 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.

Polymarket should do the right thing. Unfortunately that means shut down entirely.

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