Can somebody eli5 me this? I am not sure I am getting it

Poly market is a gambling platform where people bet on things that will happen in real life.

Bob made a bet that Iran would bomb Israel on some specific date.

Unrelated and unaware about Bob, Fabian is a journalist. Fabian wrote an accurate article describing an attack where Iran bombed Israel.

Bob’s bet was wrong. He’s about to loose a lot of money. So Bob threatens to kill Fabian. Bob tells Fabien he must change his story, so Bob doesn’t loose money.

First, that is deeply fucked up. Second, who pays or determine which way a bet went?

Do you see how many bets may end up in ambiguous states where it is interpretable which side won?

~~If the bet is successful, Polymarket pays out — just like how more conventional betting works ~~ (Edit: this is incorrect — it uses matched betting. See the comment below mine for more detail)

In terms of who determines which way a bet goes, it seems like this is also Polymarket, and that they rely on journalistic coverage and official announcements.

This journalist reported that one of the missiles landed and exploded, and it appears that this was used to deny paying out to the people who places at bet that no missiles would land that day. The gamblers tried to coerce the journalist to change their report to say that all of the missiles were intercepted, and that the thing that actually landed and exploded was just a missile fragment from the intercepted missile. I have no idea whether this would’ve actually changed the outcome of the bet from Polymarket’s perspective, but the gamblers certainly seemed to think so.

It highlights the absurdity of betting on events like this

Actually Polymarket never pays out. Every bet is matched with someone holding the opposite bet (and prices to make a bet shift accordingly to market demand for each side). Polymarket just rakes in fees, but they never lose money regardless of how a bet goes.