Forbes published a story about a Louisiana man that killed 8 children over the weekend containing a box that asked readers to predict whether Congress would do anything about gun control, reports Matthew Gault of 404 Media.
Gault reports, “‘Congress WILL/ WON’T pass new gun safety legislation before 31st December 2026?’ The box said then asked readers to ‘make your prediction.’ A green checkmark and red X pulsed in place. Sliding your cursor over each changes the construction of the sentence.
“Forbes launched ForbesPredict in January as part of an effort to reverse declining traffic from search engines and keep users on its website longer. It’s a prediction market like Kalshi or Polymarket, but unlike those sites there’s no money to be won. ‘AI is fundamentally changing how people access information, and that shift is already starkly visible in publisher’s traffic,’ Nina Gould, Forbes’ Chief Innovation Officer said in a press release announcing ForbesPredict. ‘Our response isn’t to chase scale, but to deepen engagement. ForbesPredict gives our audience a reason to return, participate and invest their thinking—not just consume headlines.’
“ForbesPredict is an attempt to gamify news consumption and keep users scanning the website. Rather than cash, players earn tokens. ‘Tokens that have no cash value but matter within the ForbesPredict ecosystem as a signal of judgment over time. The tokens unlock greater status, gameplay advantages, and non-monetary rewards along the way,’ Gould told Publishing Insider.”
Read more here.
