The most sinister bets of turbo-capitalism

Emmanuel Fabian is a reporter for The Times of Israel who reported the explosion of a missile on the outskirts of Jerusalem. No one was injured, so he was surprised that, in a single day, he received two communications urging him to rewrite the story to say that what had hit that wooded clearing were the fragments of a missile shot down by Israeli defenses. With the information he had available, he considered his information to be correct: the explosion that had occurred could only be explained if the projectile had detonated, not by the fall of exploded remains in the air. More messages followed, increasingly disturbing in tone, including death threats, until he found the key to why so many people were interested in that seemingly minor incident. It turns out there were 23 million dollars at stake: those who had bet on the Polymarket website that Iran would not manage to detonate a missile on Israeli soil that day.

This portal has distanced itself from these practices, but it is the umpteenth iteration of digital turbo-capitalism in which large platforms disassociate themselves from the excesses caused by their users with the flimsy excuse that they only provide the playing fields. There are indications that certain individuals have enriched themselves with insider information. And there are those who fear that, when so much money is at stake, it can end up influencing politics. It is not far-fetched to think that someone might press the button to launch a bomb if they gain a juicy commission by making some scoundrels win a fortune. Athletes are beginning to complain about the effect of these platforms, and now, apparently, it is the journalists' turn. Censorship can take many forms, and the infamous pressure from the bros is one of the best illustrations of the present times.