Unforeseen threat
A defense correspondent for the Times of Israel has revealed he has received death threats from users of prediction market (PM) giant Polymarket to alter his report on a missile strike to skew a betting market.
Prior to PMs, Emanuel Fabian’s routine dispatch of a missile hit near Jerusalem in the US/Israel-Iran war wouldn’t have placed the reporter at the center of an unresolved bet and the subject of death threats, as he shared via X:
“After you make us lose $900,000 we will invest no less than that to finish you.”
Such threats started after Fabian’s missile strike dispatch on March 10. In what the reporter stated was “a relatively unimportant” daily update, he wrote a blog post stating that no one was injured and included dashboard footage of the strike.
Fabian was later requested via email to change his story to state that instead that the missile was intercepted and only fragments of it struck Israeli soil.
Devil’s in the details
The journalist refused to change his story after consulting with the military, stating: “I was very confused as to why anybody would really care. It doesn’t really matter.”
The messages, however, became more menacing until Fabian realized that the accounts contacting him via X appeared to all be tied to Polymarket accounts.
The Guardian cited the war correspondent as saying that he found the offending bet, with $23m at stake. The bet was whether or not Iran would strike Israel on March 10. A “strike” reportedly needed to involve “a bomb or a missile, non-intercepted, hitting Israeli soil.”
traders who had bet “no” on a March 10 strike stood to gain $23m
Polymarket traders who had bet “no” on a March 10 strike stood to gain $23m if Fabian changed his story to simply that intercepted missile fragments hit Israel instead of a full missile strike.
According to Fabian, the threats escalated, with one bettor writing to him over 100 times in one night, while attempting to call him and threaten his family.
“You have 90 minutes left to update the lie” one threat went, or else “you will discover enemies who will be willing to pay anything to make your life miserable.”
Looking ahead
Polymarket issued a statement that it “condemns the harassment and threats directed at Emanuel Fabian” and that PMs rely on the integrity of independent reporters. The company added that “attempts to pressure journalists to alter their reporting undermine that integrity and undermine the markets themselves.”
A Lancaster University researcher specializing in PMs has theorized that Polymarket’s push to monetize world events “could have chaotic, outsize world consequences.”
Fabian meanwhile, predicted more journalists would be threatened by sore bettors. “I think if Polymarket keeps growing the way it does, and Polymarket doesn’t change the way it works, I do not doubt other journalists will get contacted or harassed or even threatened.”
