Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

61–70 of 1001 posts

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

#61
I notice certain pattern among some internet communities.

Extreme hype / popularity around a community, followed by degeneration (or increased visibility of prior degeneracy) of that community, followed by bans and/or deplatforming. Off the top of my head FatPeopleHate, TheDonald, and recently Parler are prior examples, I bet there are others though.

WallStreetBets seems like it's heading down a similar path. In fact, I bet a lot of the people in these communities overlap, though I have no proof.

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

#62
post #29
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And leave no way for common people to organize against the status quo. The establishment sure would love that. Why are you on HN then in the first place?

My history class must have skipped over the part where the american revolution was organized on twitter and facebook.

It was organized by the wealthiest people in the country. If you believe this revolution was coming from the "grassroot", you are awfully mistaken.

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

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gay bear" is not an insult or pejorative. Most of wsb were "gay bears* in Feb - April.

"Gay bear" is almost exclusively used as an insult on the subreddit, and this week has been one of the primary insults used in reference to the short sellers (everyones #1 enemy on WSB right now). It would still be pejorative even if not used that way, but it's ridiculous to claim that it's not a pejorative when it is explicitly used as an insult.

I don't know what else to say except that you're wrong.

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

#64
post #57
post #46

For those of us not in the know, what is so special about today regarding WSB? I know there's a feud with short sellers going on, but I haven't been following the details.

They've officially ticked off rich and well-connected people, so regulators are coming to shake the tree branch (I have no idea whether what they're doing is illegal or not) and the platforms want to distance themselves from that ASAP.

I don't think anybody has ever suffered negative regulatory action for doing a short squeeze. Even Martin Shkreli didn't get in trouble for his.

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

#65
I think it is complete crap that companies using legal platform protections can ban people by arbitrarily declaring speech they don't like as hate speech. There should be legal requirements that any companies which enjoy platform protections must prove in a court of law that speech can accurately be classified as hateful before banning anyone.

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

#66
post #29
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And leave no way for common people to organize against the status quo. The establishment sure would love that. Why are you on HN then in the first place?

My history class must have skipped over the part where the american revolution was organized on twitter and facebook.

IIRC, The American revolution was coordinated and funded by the existing colonial administrations, with aid from France. It was a secessionist movement backed by regional business interests in response to a reassertion of imperial sovereignty by a previously lax British government.

Something to be proud of, certainly. But not a grassroots thing, even if it did have some degree of popular support.

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

#67
post #57
post #46

For those of us not in the know, what is so special about today regarding WSB? I know there's a feud with short sellers going on, but I haven't been following the details.

They've officially ticked off rich and well-connected people, so regulators are coming to shake the tree branch (I have no idea whether what they're doing is illegal or not) and the platforms want to distance themselves from that ASAP.

Incredibly naive to think that WSB itself isn't filled with rich and well-connected people. In its early days, WSB was almost entirely a bunch of rich wall street traders with extra tens/hundreds of thousands to spare on crazy bets. Nowadays, it's one of the largest subreddits on one of the largest websites in the world. WSB isn't some niche gathering of "average joes" - all of the major wall street firms monitor it, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that many of them downright manipulate it via astroturfing.

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

#68
post #4
post #2

>“hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.” banned for posting memes like https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/135439073542503628...

The r word isn’t nice. But that cannot be the reason to ban the server. This sounds like an excuse. They mention fraud several times -but say it’s NOT because of fraud— but I almost perceive a wink when they mention it like that.

There is nothing wrong with the word retard. It’s a legitimate dictionary word. Every few years the PC police has to arbitrarily decide that something is morally unfashionable and then they convince everyone that if they don’t replace it with an equivalent string, they’re somehow bad people. It makes no sense and everyone goes along with it. Whatever the current replacement is, that will probably be disallowed in a few years too. There’s nothing “not nice” about directing it toward one’s self as a joke. It’s not like they’re using it to bully a disabled person. People who can even afford the bandwidth to complain and choose that hill to die on have far too few problems in their life.

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

#69
post #31
post #17

I have no doubt the timing was extremely intentional.

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

I joined and had an extremely negative experience immediately, left, and reported it.

This was months ago. Imagine suddenly thousands of people are doing this and now Discord is being flooded with reports.

-

Something some people might not know as well, there was another WSB Discord started by Jartek that used to be linked on the subreddit

That Discord was much more tame even with minimal moderation. No racial or homophobic slurs, but still allowing most if not all content people wanted to bring up short of porn...

Post scandal the subreddit changed back to this Discord, which was a mistake. It really was a vile server.

-

Edit because now I'm rate limited over vindicating downvotes from people mourning that dumpster :)

Crazy how every direct reply to me has needed someone else to correct them. I guess my comment was coherent enough for people not foaming at the mouth to cry over some racist dumpster fire of a server...

-

Again, there were two servers

One was linked in the subreddit, had minimal moderation, policed really hard slurs like ni*er, allowed shitposting all you wanted otherwise.

That one gained traction while WSBGod's saga was going on.

-

The one I referenced which is the one deleted today, where mods were throwing n bombs for fun, was mostly regarded as an embarrassing weird place people might stumble upon from Google.

You couldn't even find it easily, someone had to invite you directly and some of them weirdly saw those invites as a favor (that's how I was invited there, someone liked one of my DDs in the main server and thought they were inviting me to sit with the cool kids... right.)

It wasn't tied to the subreddit and referred to itself as the "OG Discord" because it existed before the subreddit officially tied itself to a discord server.

-

Jartek's "saga" took place, and because he had created the well regarded Discord server the link was replaced with one to the outright vile server.

Today the outright vile one was banned.

Good riddance.

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

#70
post #29
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And leave no way for common people to organize against the status quo. The establishment sure would love that. Why are you on HN then in the first place?

My history class must have skipped over the part where the american revolution was organized on twitter and facebook.

"Don't be snarky."

"Eschew flamebait."

Please stick to the site guidelines, no matter how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. If we all work together we can avoid flamewar hell, which will keep HN interesting, which is in all of our interests.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Post reply on HN