An Israeli military reservist and a civilian were indicted last month for using classified information to place bets ahead of Israel’s war with Iran in June 2025. Similarly, journalists could easily exploit their knowledge for insider trading on the platform. I dearly hope that’s not been happening, and won’t happen, in this unnerving new arena, where reality, journalism, gambling and criminality intertwine.

This. And this wonderful comment I read elsewhere:

https://lemmy.world/post/44266355/22665557

I feel like this summarizes the time we’re living in. Some poor bastard somewhere sitting on his computer chatting with some lady he believes he is paying for attention, but in fact he is just being pitied by some unnamed underpaid worker in the Philippines. Meanwhile they’re both filling the accounts of an online influencer and some onlyfans tech bro, both of whom are surely completely miserable in their own right.

All this, and no one doing anything about it, feels like “2026 in a nutshell.”

Everything is a scam.

Prediction market advocates said they would make the hidden knowledge of crowds more visible.

What they actually did was build a financial incentive for information asymmetry.

Idk if yall have noticed, but the last thing we need in 2026 is another thing trying to manipulate what people believe.