Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

941–950 of 1001 posts

Re: Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

#941

Post by Melting_Harps »

jug wrote: post #777

It does feel like a watershed moment regarding hedge funds. This is the first time netizens capitalize on hedge fund short favorites and it has been surprisingly easy to cause an absolute catastrophy in the order of billion losses for them. I heard Melvin Capital may even have gone bankrupt? And how to do it? You get people to invest in a stock that is expected by the industry to go belly up. Seriously. It's that eas…

> It does feel like a watershed moment regarding hedge funds. This is the first time netizens capitalize on hedge fund short favorites and it has been surprisingly easy to cause an absolute catastrophy in the order of billion losses for them. I heard Melvin Capital may even have gone bankrupt?

I spent all night going through many of those threads, and I have to say they are ready to join Bitcoin once the SEC cracks down on them and freezes their Robinhood accounts and possibly even their bank accounts linked to Robinhood.

If Melvin does go down it will be its own success, but now they're going full vigilante investor mode, and putting money in BB, AMC etc... this won't stop unless the State intervenes and could set a precedent and as you say create a 'watershed moment.'

It won't be long until they realize what the long con really is: central bank based fiat currency that created these boom-bust cycles in the first place.

I initially mocked them when I heard about them taking GME to its recent rise, and still kind of do as WSB is a joke even by their own admission; but that doesn't mean it cannot create positive change. After all comedians just use humour in their jokes to highlight and poke fun of some of Society's most absurd aspects with varying levels of success in reforming it.

Dave Chappelle's latest monolouge at SNL after the election highlighted this very well.

Re: Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

#942

Post by lordnacho »

fractionalhare wrote: post #938
lordnacho wrote: post #897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, I hadn't considered I might be reading a skewed view of what the PnL distribution was. However it's still not a great look that the firm can be put in such a position. It's not actually an excuse that events are unprecedented. Thanks for your input. I've worked during such crises myself and it's stressful.

Yeah I'd like to caution that approximately everything reported about this is basically incorrect, even from reputable media. That includes PnL stuff but equally applies to...well, all the other stuff. I can't even count the number of conspiracies I've seen repeated. I get that hedge funds are categorically unsympathetic characters in this play. But people are so angry that fact checking doesn't seem to matter. It do…

Do you think the move is actually powered by the WSB soccer moms, or is it other funds pushing?

Re: Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

#943

Post by bko »

bcruddy wrote: post #914
bko wrote: post #869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing that shutting down or regulating is the best solution, but it is the most likely outcome. How would one go about educating people? There's been a lot of ink spilled on this story and it seems to have captured the public's imagination. Not all of the reporting is accurate, but all the major media outlets get out the point that this is essentially reckless market manipulation by a group of loosely bande…

How is borrowing then selling 140% of the available shares legal? How is that not market manipulation? This is the market at work. This was taken too far and the market has a method for correcting this behavior and we're seeing it now. The difference is retail is going to win AND there's no backroom deal to be made to stop the bleeding. We NEED financial reform but we need to look at what allowed this situation in th…

> How is borrowing then selling 140% of the available shares legal? How is that not market manipulation?

Why wouldn't someone be allowed to lend out a security they own to someone else?

If not allowed, why wouldn't I be allowed to make an agreement where I pay you the difference between a future stock price and some fixed value?

> The difference is retail is going to win AND there's no backroom deal to be made to stop the bleeding.

The backroom deal will be a phone call to the CEO of reddit, discord, disqus and similar and tell them to cut it out. Simple as that. No coordinating mechanism, this will die.

Re: Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

#944

Post by jermaustin1 »

baybal2 wrote: post #899
bko wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how to do it? You get people to invest in a stock that is expected by the industry to go belly up. A lot of the people involved aren't just buying and holding. They're specifically buying/selling short dated out of the money options in order to move the price. Some understand the market microstructure and the various levers they have to make the price move using what is effectively leverage. > Seriously. It's t…

> And there will be more laws made targeting individuals engaging in this sort of activity (basically coordinating with groups of people). These laws will not be legal under US law, because US congress is not permitted to make a law abridging an act of speaking, or expressing an idea, or opinion. > Finance is highly regulated and arbitrarily so. The level of arbitrariness of legal process in legal systems of ex-UK co…

> These laws will not be legal under US law, because US congress is not permitted to make a law abridging an act of speaking, or expressing an idea, or opinion.

They may just decide instead of policing the speech, to police the practice, and make being an investor even more arbitrarily difficult.

I can easily imagine a law getting passed that in order to invest in a brokerage account where you have autonomy over the investments requires you to be an accredited investor, and it will be worded so that it is for the benefit of the people who were taken for a ride on massive "pump-and-dump" schemes that originated on misinformation platforms and social media, regardless of whether they were truly pump-and-dump or just tom-fuckery against "big hedge".

Re: Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

#945

Post by jug »

jariel wrote: post #826
jug wrote: post #777

It does feel like a watershed moment regarding hedge funds. This is the first time netizens capitalize on hedge fund short favorites and it has been surprisingly easy to cause an absolute catastrophy in the order of billion losses for them. I heard Melvin Capital may even have gone bankrupt? And how to do it? You get people to invest in a stock that is expected by the industry to go belly up. Seriously. It's that eas…

I'm sorry but this is a possibly irresponsible take for at least a few reasons. The populism on this issue is completely out of touch with reality. 1) As the stock pops due to irrational upwards pressure - the hedges funds might lose a bit, but in reality a lot of 'regular people' will be left holding the bag. When the stock inevitably crashes, those 'regular people' will lose a lot and it will probably be a more mea…

> "So it's simple to discover and execute, and there is a financial incentive, " - please - no, this is completely irresponsible.

Do you refute my claim that it's simple to discover and execute? They're essentially just banding together on public information here. GameStop, Blackberry, Nokia, AMC, they're all affected and I'm just counting days of developments here.

As for the financial incentive, it is _absolutely_ driving this behavior. The taste of cash. Most will of course lose money on this, but this is not my point. My point? There is a financial incentive! I'm not talking about morale or ethics, I'm talking about why I think this might be a watershed moment. The masses realizing this is at all possible.

Hell, throwing away cash on lotteries is also a terrible way to build fortunes, yet it's a massive industry and lives are ruined over this as well.

Re: Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

#946

Post by bko »

jug wrote: post #940
bko wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how to do it? You get people to invest in a stock that is expected by the industry to go belly up. A lot of the people involved aren't just buying and holding. They're specifically buying/selling short dated out of the money options in order to move the price. Some understand the market microstructure and the various levers they have to make the price move using what is effectively leverage. > Seriously. It's t…

> Finance is highly regulated and arbitrarily so. But how can you regulate that people get together and buy stock? They need... 1) Internet bulletin board. That's it. The barrier of entry is just so damn low, and that's in part also why this has happened. In hindsight I'm surprised it hasn't happened before but I suppose Covid-19 brought this on. I think it would be easier to regulate something that at least takes a…

> This time, sure, it was Reddit and the subreddit may be suspended. Next time it'll be a Discord or Telegram board or something. It's just... so easy

It's not so easy. There are concentrated tech players. There's decentralized systems but they aren't there yet in terms of usability for millions of people to just log on and use seamlessly like they do w/ Reddit. It may get there eventually, but its nowhere close to being available.

And then you have different layers of protocol that are all more or less centralized. AWS, gcp, Azure isn't going to host illegal or risky content. And even if you get around that, you'll have to contend w/ the ISPs that can just block arbitrarily if they so choose.

Yes, you can get around all those, but not on the scale to make a meaningful impact and the barriers will deter all but the most fervent supporters, and they likely wouldn't have enough money or influence to cause the havoc they're causing today.

Re: Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

#947

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

betwixthewires wrote: post #746
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to deal with it is through splitting these companies up - that's the only constitutional way, and we must start immediately. They're too big.

They're not going to be too big for very long. Their size depends on people being there, and if they keep banning people they'll just get smaller. Once all the interesting people are banned the regular people will go where the interesting people are. They're about to have their blockbuster moment and no bailouts can stop it.

I hope you're right - I truly believe that post 2012 social media has been a cancer on society, in addition to the 24/7 newscycle. But I somehow am not as optimistic as you are. People far underestimate the power of twitter/fb/youtube.

The power in those sites is that they are not siloed and at scale, meaning you can reach a much broader audience. Parler would never be able to influence the mass market because it was so specialized - making it ineffective at evangelization. WSB would never be what it is without the platform of reddit. Going to a small specific site will not have the same power, even though I think it is better to host your own hardware and do that.

Re: Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

#948

Post by agumonkey »

slavik81 wrote: post #660
px43 wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is an app for kids to talk about playing video games. That's like being upset that you got banned for cussing someone out on Club Penguin. The target audience for Discord is kids, of course they're going to have harsher moderation policies than IRC did back in the day.

Discord lets you tag channels as NSFW. There are clearly design features intended specifically for adults.

I had the same issues with PhDs you know. Immaturity is not a property of teens only.

Re: Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

#949

Post by kortilla »

bko wrote: post #832
jug wrote: post #777

It does feel like a watershed moment regarding hedge funds. This is the first time netizens capitalize on hedge fund short favorites and it has been surprisingly easy to cause an absolute catastrophy in the order of billion losses for them. I heard Melvin Capital may even have gone bankrupt? And how to do it? You get people to invest in a stock that is expected by the industry to go belly up. Seriously. It's that eas…

> And how to do it? You get people to invest in a stock that is expected by the industry to go belly up. A lot of the people involved aren't just buying and holding. They're specifically buying/selling short dated out of the money options in order to move the price. Some understand the market microstructure and the various levers they have to make the price move using what is effectively leverage. > Seriously. It's t…

> a market is allocating capital to a dying company just because meme, then the market isn't serving its purpose. I don't see how this is different than what is constantly being criticized such as flash crashes, contagion and large moves based

It’s not your job to decide what is an efficient place for capital. The market is serving its purpose exactly right now by allowing the free trade of shares in GME. If people want to spend their money on a GME share to be a part of something, that’s their prerogative.

You know what else the market allocates capital to? Gold funds, who do nothing but sit on giant vaults of gold. It’s about the stupidest allocation of capital possible but nobody is clutching their pearls about that.

Telling people what is inappropriate to do with their money is a great way to get them to do it more. The whole reason we have a free market is because historically the big people in charge can’t allocate capital more efficiently than free-for-alls.

Re: Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

#950

Post by undefined1 »

ggggtez wrote: post #732
NotPavlovsDog wrote: post #669

This is really exciting, feels like open standards, independent internet is going to continue getting extreme motivation to expand and establish, with private "freedom of speech" censorship by for-profit platforms. We're going to see more fragmentation, and growth of closed platforms perceived by users as "slightly less evil" such as telegram vs watsapp. This may also motivate the return to truly open internet ideals…

I don't know where you even come up with these outdated ideas. Very few people care about what you are talking about. The subset of people who care are: tech savvy, young, mostly male, and vaguely misanthropic. This demographic is already served in numerous places, and everyone else is rather glad to see these people chased off of platforms they use for sharing videos of dancing and food.

> and everyone else is rather glad to see these people chased off of platforms

Then they are lacking empathy and being short-sighted. And apparently won't see the problem until it affects them directly.

Post reply on HN