Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by cbozeman » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #224

motohagiography wrote: post #206

Nice one Discord, you just radicalized 2 million WSB subscribers and everyone else who hears about it. Well done.

Comments like these really drive home how much a deranged cult phenomenon this whole thing is, more so than any headlines.

By "radicalized" he means, "Will cause them to buy and hold more GameStop to continue the pain until Wall Street learns to back down."

Diamond hands all the way. They had the chance to take it on the chin like a man, but they wanted to play rough, so we'll play rough.

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

#272

Post by rvz » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

f430 wrote: post #35

qqn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thought crossed my mind too, but if so then why?

well the r/wsb subreddit has gone private too. We are experiencing technical difficulties based on unprecedented scale as a result of the newfound interest in WSB. We are unable to ensure Reddit's content policy and the WSB rules are enforceable without a technology platform that can support automation of this enforcement. WSB will be back. This seems like a DDOS attack on r/wsb well knowing that the moderators canno…

1 hour later after your post, the sub-reddit is back (again), which is unsurprising since this isn't the first time.

They're not fuckin leaving that easily and the show goes on.

> edit: After hours market shows GME is has TANKED!!!! Closed at 345 and dipped to 248. Holy, there will be class action lawsuits for sure now.

Good. Great time to buy more til the big short squeeze.

Can't stop, won't stop, next stop? GameStop.

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

#273

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #209

ve55 wrote: post #14

And they chose today as the best possible time to enact this ban? Really? I really think they should have put more thought into the timing of this decision; a lot of users are going to be upset and will suddenly start to realize that a single company has a monopoly on their online social life (this may seem like an exaggeration, but it feels quite true to me colloquially, especially if you're a younger US male and/or…

Some posts below said that banning for hate speech was really a charade. But if that's true, what's wrong with retail investors pooling their resources to squeeze short? How is it different from a hedge fund pooling resources to flex their muscle of financial engineering?

There wouldn't be anything wrong with that. There'd be a lot right with it, honestly - I would be trumpeting it as a clear victory of the little guy over snobby funds who don't think anyone else can understand finance.

But what's happening right now is almost certainly a pump and dump with a short squeeze as a facade. I've seen a lot of commenters who seem to be grievously misled about the actual mechanics of a short squeeze, and think that short sellers will be forced to buy all their stock at market price on Friday.

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

#274

Post by jayd16 » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

johncessna wrote: post #227

broodbucket wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an open chat platform. Yes it can be manually moderated, but all it takes is one guy posting something they know is bannable for admins to be within the rules to ban a server. Pretty convenient.

Maybe that's the next round in the information wars? Each side probing the automated moderating systems of large social media platforms until they find the right sequence that will trigger a shutdown. I'd assume state actors will be able to do this on their own, but for us without state sponsorship, maybe you'll be able to buy it as a service off of the dark web.

Next? Triggering automated bans has been a tactic for quite a long time.

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

#275

Post by cbozeman » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 1:18 AM UTC

chrissnell wrote: post #270

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #259

Remember: Parler tried “making their own X”. They were taken offline by a concerted effort at every level, despite the fact that a large portion of the capitol protests were organized on Facebook and YouTube. Anyone who’s ever been an activist for long enough knows that the censorship that silenced your enemies will eventually silence you. Corporate policing of speech needs to stop.

Social media is about to take the same trajectory that MP3s once did. Just as we saw the evolution of Napster and IRC trading, the RIAA takedowns, the rise of BitTorrent, and the eventual emergence of streaming services, I believe we will see a similar trajectory with social media and free speech: 1. Technology enables new social phenomena that subvert the status quo. 2. Corporations move to combat these phenomena 3.…

Its the last part of #4 that we have to prevent.

> but avoiding a complete loss of control

We need the complete loss of control. Corporations control entirely too much of American, and really, worldwide, life as it is. We can't give this one to them. Its too important. The ability to freely communicate ideas, even in vulgar, poorly considered ways, is too important and too fundamental to humanity to be allowed to be controlled.

To quote Picard, "The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!"

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

#276

Post by dmurray » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 1:20 AM UTC

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #258

TechBro8615 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that 4Chan itself has not been the target of deplatforming efforts is confusing to me. If I were to put my tinfoil hat on for a bit, I might speculate that it’s a honeypot that shares data with the feds.

4chan hosts it's own server: — how could it? Cloudflare did drop 8chan for political pressure. Both also have a very undeserved reputation. I saw news reports on 8chan as if it were something similar to Stormfront . The front page was mostly video game and pornography and one had to search very deep into it's hidden circles to find racial supremacy content.

> 4chan hosts it's own server: — how could it?

ISPs could just drop their customers' traffic to that server. This happens all the time and has happened to 4chan before.

Or they could go further and refuse to peer with any ISP that doesn't block 4chan, or lobby to have the government compel ISPs to block it, likely on think-of-the-children or think-of-the-terrorism grounds.

Self hosting definitely isn't some magic way of preventing all censorship.

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

#277

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #99

sickygnar wrote: post #60

Someone likely paid the platforms and/or admins to take them down

Did you're read the article, and the statement Discord put out? I think the stated reason is the believable. > Discord says it did not ban the server for financial fraud — rather, it was banned because it continued to allow “hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.”

[deleted]

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

#278

Post by majormajor » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

cbozeman wrote: post #271

fennecfoxen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like these really drive home how much a deranged cult phenomenon this whole thing is, more so than any headlines.

By "radicalized" he means, "Will cause them to buy and hold more GameStop to continue the pain until Wall Street learns to back down." Diamond hands all the way. They had the chance to take it on the chin like a man, but they wanted to play rough, so we'll play rough.

> By "radicalized" he means, "Will cause them to buy and hold more GameStop to continue the pain until Wall Street learns to back down."

What's the endgame? Sell at some point? At a profit or a loss?

Seems like in that scenario anger would play to the hands of the people who bought earlier and can sell to newcomers...

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

#279

Post by joseph_grobbles » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 1:23 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #191

ashtonkem wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risk of SEC involvement. This admin is probably nowhere near as lenient on this kind of stuff as the last was, and the recent nonsense with GameStop is probably bad enough to attract negative regulatory attention.

That’s the joke. The SEC pursues the mostly harmless while letting the sharks go free. Did they do anything about naked short selling of Overstock stock? Nope, and now that it’s happened again and retail took advantage of a bad trade, the rules suddenly change “to protect the little guy.” It’s disingenuous at a minimum, and crony capitalism when taken to the maximum. Are they doing anything about Nancy Pelosi (her hu…

"Pump and dump schemes absolutely should not be supported. Piling into a short squeeze is not a pump and dump scheme."

LOL. Give me a break.

This is ___100%___ a P&D scam. They can squeeze shorts because they target trash stocks of failing businesses (you know -- the stocks that get shorted), then create a positively ridiculous story about a value proposition. A bunch of moron retail investors on Reddit aren't going to do shit to squeeze shorts, but they're the front for a couple of very well financed players.

But...something something Nancy Pelosi. Christ. Yeah, she's really scamming the system playing a stock at all time highs. Real elite moves.

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

#280

Post by hagy » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

easton wrote: post #100

xiphias2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It worked, Gamestop postmarket price is down from market close.

In the last 20-30 minutes too, which suggests it was purely because of WSB getting wacked. That's weird, it seems like the sentiment of the people investing in GameStop wouldn't be changed just because of this.

It's after hours trading, which is very low volume and generally not available to most retail investors. Probably just another hedge fund getting in their shorts at these high prices. The FUD spread due to the plunge in after hours is just a bonus for their new short position.

Further, I think everyone is drastically over estimating the impact of r/wsb and retail investors in general on the GME action. This is hedge fund vs. hedge fund in an opportunity for unusually outsized gains on both the long and short positions over relatively short time frames. Good for them to keep the narrative focused on retail investors rather than capitalist titans in a financial blood bath.