Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
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.
loading story #47398249
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.

loading story #47398429
loading story #47398193
loading story #47398136
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?

loading story #47398142
{"deleted":true,"id":47398100,"parent":47398020,"time":1773664347,"type":"comment"}
loading story #47398878