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Right-wing billionaires are seizing control of American media. The Trump-supporting Ellison family struck a deal last week to acquire Warner Bros., which would be merged with Paramount. Once approved, the Ellisons will control CBS News, TikTok, CNN, Comedy Central, HBO, and other outlets.
David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount, already put conservative pundit Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News. He reportedly promised Trump he would make “sweeping changes” at CNN if the Trump administration greenlighted his Warner Bros. acquisition.
We cannot allow information to be controlled by a few powerful and ethically malleable people. The only way to fight back is to build up independent media that is free from the influence of billionaires and corporate America.
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On February 28, the United States and Israel began major combat operations in Iran. For some, the consequences of this action were fatal. By Monday, the war had claimed the lives of at least six U.S. soldiers, hundreds of people in Iran, and dozens more in neighboring Gulf states. The bombardment of Iran reportedly destroyed a girls’ primary school, killing about 150 people, the vast majority of them students. A spokesman for the U.S. military said CENTCOM takes the reports seriously and is “looking into“ the allegation.
For others, the beginning of the war was simply a money-making opportunity. In the hours before the strike, six newly-created accounts on the prediction market Polymarket raked in nearly $1 million by betting that the U.S. would strike Iran by February 28.
Many observers, including the analytics site that first flagged the suspicious trades, suspect that the accounts benefited from insider knowledge. But it’s impossible to say for sure. The international version of Polymarket, where the bets were made, does not require users to identify themselves and accepts bets in crypto.
One such account, “dicedicedice,” made a single wager of nearly $30,000 that the U.S. would strike Iran by February 28. Hours later, the account recorded a profit of about $120,000.
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Overall, “$529 million was traded on contracts tied to the timing of the strikes” on Polymarket, Bloomberg reported.
The White House “denied anyone in Trump’s orbit was behind the lucrative trades.” It’s unclear which members of the administration would be considered “in Trump’s orbit.” Donald Trump Jr. serves as an advisor to both Polymarket and its chief rival, Kalshi.
Moving forward, Polymarket is offering dozens of markets on war-related developments.
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On its website, Polymarket describes allowing wagers on acts of war as a public service, claiming it provides vital information to “those directly affected by the attacks.”
The promise of prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events to society. That ability is particularly invaluable in gut-wrenching times like today. After discussing with those directly affected by the attacks, who had dozens of questions, we realized that prediction markets could give them the answers they needed in ways TV news and 𝕏 could not.
Popular Information contacted Polymarket and asked which people directly affected by the attacks had spoken with the company and why prediction markets could provide them with “the answers they needed.” The inquiry was not returned.
Prediction markets that serve U.S. customers are formally prohibited by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from offering any market “that involves, relates to, or references terrorism, assassination, [or] war.” Polymarket offers its war-related markets on an offshore trading platform that technically does not accept customers from the United States. Nevertheless, many people in the U.S. use Polymarket and shield their true location with a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Polymarket is also rolling out a separate prediction market for people in the U.S. that will comply with CFTC rules.
But even for Kalshi, which operates a single prediction market that is regulated by the CFTC, the restriction on war-related markets has little practical impact. Kalsh